Muslim integration in Europe.

[Dr.T]

I move the thread and now we get pictures of mosques.

*tears hair out*

I'm just uploading some photos of dozens of mosques in southern Spain. My intention is to explain that they are authentic buildings, many moderns, who are scattered throughout the country's geography. Many people think that there are no mosques with minarets in the European Union. Many of these minarets are larger than those of the Catholic churches.

Don't worry. No more pics. The next images in Religious Architecture: it time to come back to this thread... there are new fantastics projects all over the world !!!. I'm a slave of WNY-F.

[Ninjahedge]

Jumping back....

Just like concerts, isn't building a stadium like venue for religion a little.....cold? Distant? Impersonal?

I know we are a pack animal, but having to crowd in with a bunch of people to hear religion over loudspeakers is a bit impersonal and kind of misses the point.

i think the single guy bowing down to prayer has more significance, at least in observance if not in actual cosmic importance, than seeing how big a church you can build and if you can fill it.

That strikes more of politics than devine observance.

What's next? A tower to Heaven?

[Dr.T]

Jumping back....

Just like concerts, isn't building a stadium like venue for religion a little.....cold? Distant? Impersonal?

I know we are a pack animal, but having to crowd in with a bunch of people to hear religion over loudspeakers is a bit impersonal and kind of misses the point.

i think the single guy bowing down to prayer has more significance, at least in observance if not in actual cosmic importance, than seeing how big a church you can build and if you can fill it.

That strikes more of politics than devine observance.

What's next? A tower to Heaven?

Maybe a tower to Hell... designed by Devil !,... its a great architect, one of the best of History, he learned his job in the Heaven.

The Hell is the same for all religions, but the Heaven... you know they say: is of diferent colors for each religion. I dream in colors,... and you?

[Fabrizio]

Danes Study Immigrants After Cartoonist Attack

Johann Spanner for The New York Times

By SARAH LYALL
Published: January 6, 2010

COPENHAGEN — As part of the prolonged national headache caused by a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, last weekend’s attack on one of the cartoonists responsible had a certain awful inevitability about it.

Once again, the motivation was fury, still fresh after all this time, over the dissemination of the cartoons. And once again, the circumstances — in this case, the news that the person accused of the attack was a Muslim immigrant suspected of having links to terrorists — has led Danes into an uneasy examination of their relationship to their Muslim population.

In a country that already has one of the strictest immigration policies in Western Europe, the attack has also spurred politicians from across the political spectrum to demand ever more stringent rules about who should be allowed to live here. “I’m sorry to say, but it’s déjà vu — every time we experience an episode, then in 10 minutes we have them saying we have to have a new law,” said Naser Khader, a member of Parliament and the spokesman on foreign affairs and immigration for the Conservative People’s Party. He was speaking of the increasingly powerful Danish People’s Party, whose votes the government relies on to pass legislation and whose populist, anti-immigrant rhetoric has informed and inflamed debate in recent years.

After the attack, the People’s Party leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, said that it should be easier to deport Danes linked to terrorists. “It must be crystal clear to everyone in this country that we cannot accept having Islamists who associate with terror being more or less tolerated in this country,” she said.

Mr. Khader is just as hostile toward Islamists as anyone in Danish politics; he recently proposed banning burqas. But he said the latest comments had gone too far. “You have to be responsible when such incidents happen, and not let emotions take over,” he said.

New details about the suspect in the attack on the cartoonist, 74-year-old Kurt Westergaard, have increased complaints that the security service has been lax in monitoring people suspected of being terrorist sympathizers. The attack took place late last Friday when Mr. Westergaard was threatened in his townhouse in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city, by a man carrying a knife and an ax. Mr. Westergaard has been a focus of Muslim ire since drawing perhaps the most provocative of the 12 cartoons, showing Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. He fled into a locked safe room and summoned the police with a panic button.

The suspected assailant, 28-year-old Muhudiin Mohamed Geele, was charged with two counts of attempted homicide, on Mr. Westergaard and on a police officer, and has pleaded not guilty. Mr. Geele arrived in Denmark in 1995, a refugee from the civil war in Somalia, the authorities said, and the next year was granted indefinite leave to remain. He lived in the city of Aalborg and, as a boy, was a role model for others in a youth club there, said Nuuradiin Hussein, who worked at the club.

“He was one of my favorite boys at the club,” said Mr. Hussein, who is now a social worker. “Most of the boys his age wanted to talk about girls and football, but he wanted to talk about the future and about getting an education.” Mr. Geele married and had three children, and at some point, according to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, known as PET, developed ties to the Shabab, a Somali terrorism organization, and to Al Qaeda in East Africa. He also began making frequent trips abroad. Last summer, he was detained by the authorities in Nairobi, Kenya. The proximate cause was that he had lost his passport, but intelligence officials said he also was believed to have connections to suspects in a plot to blow up several buildings, including a hotel where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was staying.

Nicholas Kamwende, head of Kenya’s antiterrorism police, said that the Kenyan authorities verbally shared “intelligence information” about him with the Danish Embassy. “We told them, ‘He is a dangerous man,’ but their reaction was negative,” Mr. Kamwende said in an interview.

In an interview with the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Mr. Geele’s now ex-wife said that PET had tried to recruit him in 2006. “The police wanted him as an informant,” she told the newspaper, “and he became sad and more and more introverted. The police thought that he had participated in combat actions in Somalia against Ethiopian forces, and that he traveled back and forth to take part in war. But he had only been in Somalia in 2005 to visit the family.”

Officials declined to say whether the agency had indeed made overtures to Mr. Geele, but said that it was normal for PET to conduct “interviews with individuals that may be of interest to the service.” And Jakob Scharf, the director general, said that there had been no evidence that might have been “deemed sufficient grounds for arresting, prosecuting or expelling” him, despite his suspected terrorism links. More recently, Mr. Geele had been living in an apartment in a down-at-heel housing project of concrete buildings typical of an immigrant neighborhood, about seven miles from central Copenhagen. Residents said that Mr. Geele had been renting a room in an apartment owned by an Egyptian taxi driver and that he was known for his religious convictions — one neighbor said he had been asked several times to turn down music and recordings of the Koran — and also for being, at least at first, aloof and unfriendly. After the arrest, the police spent more than eight hours searching the apartment, neighbors said.

What the attack on Mr. Westergaard shows perhaps more than anything is how the publication of the cartoons has irrevocably changed Denmark’s place in world affairs. The damage was compounded in 2008, when in response to a separate plot to kill Mr. Westergaard, all of Denmark’s major newspapers reprinted the cartoons. It was then that Osama bin Laden denounced the cartoons as part of “a crusade” against Islam, and other Qaeda officials called on Muslims to make Denmark a target of their fury. That June, a suicide bomber in Islamabad, Pakistan, killed eight people at the Danish Embassy.

In the latest manifestation of Denmark’s troubles, the Sudanese government on Tuesday publicly denounced “The Revenge,” a movie about the Sudanese war by the Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier. The government compared the film — which has not yet been screened, and which is due to be released this summer — to the cartoons. Each new incident forces the more extreme circles of both the anti-immigrant and Islamist groups to become more deeply entrenched in their positions, said Ole Waever, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen. Meanwhile, as the rhetoric grows ever more strident, he said, Denmark’s sense of itself is being sorely tested. “There’s a strange dialectic in the reaction,” Mr. Waever said in an interview. “There is an identity crisis where we can no longer recognize ourselves. This view of ourselves as a liberal, relaxed society no longer fits the reality.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/wo...ef=global-home

[Fabrizio]

Churches Attacked in Malaysian ‘Allah’ Dispute

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Three Christian churches were attacked with firebombs Friday as tensions rose in a dispute over whether Christians could use the word “Allah” in this largely Muslim nation.

Later in the day, small crowds rallied outside two major mosques in the capital, in a growing protest over a court ruling that overturned a government ban on the use of “Allah” by Roman Catholics as a translation for God.

Complete article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/wo...ef=global-home

-----------

Attack at a Church in Egypt Kills 7

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 6, 2010
CAIRO (AP) — Three men in a car sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd of churchgoers on Wednesday in the southern Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, killing at least seven people as they left a midnight Mass for Coptic Christmas, security officials and the church bishop said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/wo...ref=middleeast

-----------

Iran Accuses Five of Warring Against God

By NAZILA FATHI
Published: January 7, 2010
At least five protesters arrested in Iran last week during antigovernment demonstrations will be tried on charges of warring against God, which carries an automatic death sentence if they are found guilty, Iran’s judiciary said Thursday.

Complete article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/wo...ref=middleeast

[lofter1]

Churches Attacked in Malaysian ‘Allah’ Dispute

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Three Christian churches were attacked with firebombs Friday as tensions rose in a dispute over whether Christians could use the word “Allah” in this largely Muslim nation.

Is faith this precarious?

The word has been widely used as a translation for the word “God” in Malay-language texts and services, particularly among Christian indigenous tribes in the remote states of Sabah and Sarawak.

It is also the common word used to describe the Christian God in Arabic-speaking countries like Egypt and Syria and in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, whose language is a variant of the Malay language.

During the current dispute, many Muslims here have argued that the use of the word by other religions could confuse believers and tempt them to convert from Islam.

[ablarc]

An insecure God.

[lofter1]

Angry and insecure. Not the best mix.

[Fabrizio]

Britain Moves to Ban Controversial Islamic Group

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 12, 2010

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's government said Tuesday it will ban an Islamist group whose proposed protest march through a town known for honoring British soldiers killed in Afghanistan drew national outrage.

The group, Islam4UK, will be banned starting Thursday, said Home Secretary Alan Johnson. The move will allow authorities to arrest people who meet in the group's name and seize its assets.

Islam4UK reacted with outrage. Omar Bakri Mohamed, a Lebanon-based cleric who serves as the group's spiritual leader, claimed that the ban could push some of his members to violence.

The government's decision comes after Islam4UK drew national outrage by proposing a protest march at Wootton Bassett, 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of London. The small market town is well-known in Britain for its quiet repatriation ceremonies for British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The town's residents join the families of the dead and war veterans to line the streets and watch servicemen's bodies being driven through from a nearby air base.

Anjem Choudary, Bakri's U.K.-based colleague, threatened to bring 500 Islamists through the streets of Wootton Basset to highlight Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of NATO-led forces. After

The lawmakers called the move a distasteful publicity stunt and many called for Choudary's group to be outlawed.

Bakri said that the ban was ''the gravest mistake,'' describing his group was peaceful think-tank whose younger members would be pushed toward violence if it were driven underground.

In a telephone interview from Tripoli, Lebanon, Bakri claimed that he was lobbying for a peaceful reaction to the ban.

''We (were) never involved with any violence, yet,'' he said.

Bakri's group argues that, as Muslims, they're not bound by British law and has expressed support for bin Laden and al-Qaida. In its previous incarnation as al-Muhajiroun, the group was linked to several terror suspects and was accused of recruiting British Muslims to fight in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Bakri has acknowledged that some of al-Muhajiroun members have engaged in militant attacks but says the group can't be held responsible for their actions.

Bakri, who was deported from Britain in 2005, added that, whatever happened, his followers could regroup under a different name.

''Tomorrow we can call ourselves whatever we think is suitable for us,'' he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010...ef=global-home

[ablarc]

Omar Bakri Mohamed, a Lebanon-based cleric who serves as the group's spiritual leader, claimed that the ban could push some of his members to violence.

Islam is a peaceful religion.

[ablarc]

Bakri's group argues that, as Muslims, they're not bound by British law and has expressed support for bin Laden and al-Qaida. In its previous incarnation as al-Muhajiroun, the group was linked to several terror suspects and was accused of recruiting British Muslims to fight in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Bakri has acknowledged that some of al-Muhajiroun members have engaged in militant attacks but says the group can't be held responsible for their actions.

When Allah's in charge, you can't be held responsible for your actions.

British law: pshaw!

[ablarc]

I just watched Inglorious Basterds.

Did anyone on the Allied side inquire about the depth of a German soldier's commitment to Nazism? If they had, and if they had received a reassuring answer, would the Basterds have put aside their weapons and extended an olive branch?

All those uniformed Nazis ... who knows how many of them were serious about their goals?

Maybe there should be battlefield commissions to inquire how seriously committed these folks are to their rhetoric. If the commission's conclusion had been, "they're just kidding," should we have laid off?

[Fabrizio]

IMHO a good first step:

French Call For Veil Ban In Public Buildings
ELAINE GANLEY | 01/25/10 03:05 PM |

PARIS — A parliamentary panel will recommend on Tuesday that France ban face-covering Muslim veils in public locations such as hospitals and schools, but not in private buildings or on the street, the group's president said. The decision appeared to indicate that the 32-member, multiparty panel had heeded warnings that a full ban of the all-encompassing veils would be unfair, possibly unconstitutional, and could even cause trouble in a country where Islam is the second largest religion. The approximately 170-page report, to be released Tuesday, culminates a six-month inquiry into why a tiny minority of Muslim women wear such veils and the implications for France.

The work began after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in June that such garb "is not welcome" on French territory. However, Sarkozy has since pulled back from committing himself to a full ban. Such dress is considered by many as a gateway to extremism. However, it also is widely seen as an insult to gender equality and an offense to France's profoundly secular foundations.

Parliament will not be required to act on Tuesday's recommendation. And given the deep divisions within the panel – its 12 Socialist members refused to vote in a dispute with the governing right – the recommendation for a partial ban on the face-covering veils may only result in a nonbinding government resolution. The panel's mission, and a separate national identity debate on immigration, already have left some of France's Muslims feeling discriminated against, said Mohammed Moussaoui, who heads an umbrella group of various Muslim organizations.

A 2004 law already bans Muslim headscarves in classrooms. Now Muslim religious leaders, along with many experts, warn that a "general and absolute" law banning face-covering attire in the streets would stigmatize all Muslims and have other dire consequences, even driving some to extremism. They were joined last week by Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders who said they consider such a drastic step unnecessary. Monsignor Andre Vingt-Trois said he is not against anti-veil rules in "precise places," but doesn't want to see the state become involved with how people dress. "Shall we choose between the full-body veil and nude women in ads on top of a four-wheel drive?" he said last week.

France has the largest Muslim population in western Europe, estimated at some 5 million, but only several thousand Muslim women at best are thought to wear such veils, usually a "niqab" pinned across the face to cover all but the eyes. Worn with a long, dark robe, such clothing is customarily associated with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. "It is perhaps a marginal problem, but it is the visible part of the iceberg," lawmaker Andre Gerin, president of the parliamentary panel, said in an interview. "Behind the iceberg is a black tide of ... fundamentalism." He denounced those he called "gurus" or "French Taliban" who, he claimed, promote a radical brand of Islam that forces women, and young girls, to hide themselves.

Gerin, the panel's only Communist, said Tuesday's report will recommend that veils be banned in public services such as hospitals and schools, but not in private buildings or on the street. Critics of a street ban of the veils raised concern about the constitutionality of outlawing such dress. "I don't think an ideology should be fought through constraining measures but through ideas," Moussaoui, the Muslim leader, said in an interview. "It's very difficult to talk about the liberation of women through a law that constrains."

A poll by the IPSOS firm published in this week's newsweekly Le Point suggests that a majority of French disagree – with 57 percent of the 960 adults questioned favoring a total ban on the face-covering veil and 37 percent opposing one. Gerin, who wants one, stressed the need to move "progressively" toward a general law banning the attire in the streets and to work "hand in hand" with Muslim leaders, associations and others who might hold sway among Muslims.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_435226.html

[Alonzo-ny]

On the street and in their homes people should be able to wear whatever they want. In public buildings they shouldn't be treated different to someone in a balaclava or a motorcycle helmet for example.

[Fabrizio]

Agreed, although I do feel the ban should extend to the street: people should dress as they please except for covering up the face.