....there is a higher proportion of Asians in Utah than Muslims in Italy–and are overwhelmingly concentrated among the poor. More than 40 percent of Bangladeshi men in Britain under the age of 25 are unemployed. All of this excuses nothing but explains a great deal. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain are unemployment and Islamic extremism. Integrating into a society that won't employ you, educate you or house you adequately is no easy feat. Participating in a political culture that scapegoats you is also tough. Attacked as Muslims at home and abroad, they defend themselves as Muslims. Every respected report in Britain has shown a direct link between the war in Iraq and recruitment to Islamist movements. And so the symbiosis of Islamophobes and Islamists is complete, with each thriving on polarization and prejudice: picking at scabs that might have healed, until the blood runs freely. The most potent anti-Semites and bigots in Europe do not live in run-down housing projects but grace the corridors of power. They are not Muslim; they are Christian. The continent is not suffering from some new strain of bigotry imported from the Arab world or the Maghreb–it is simply suffering from one of its oldest viruses harbored among its most established ethnic populations....>> Over the past year or so the rural Italian idyll of Colle di Val d'Elsa has played host to a bitter battle for Enlightenment values. On one side, the hamlet's small Muslim community has raised a considerable amount of money to build a large mosque. Having gained the mayor's approval, the Muslims signed a declaration of cooperation with the town hall and even planted a Christmas tree at the site as a good-will gesture. In response, other locals pelted them with sausages and dumped a severed pig's head at the site. On a wall near the site vandals daubed: "No Mosque," "Christian Hill" and "Thanks to the communists the Arabs are in our house!!!" Such is the central dynamic in European race relations at present. It is probably not the dynamic you have heard most about. The most popular one making the rounds this side of the Atlantic involves hordes of Muslims, rabid with anti-Semitic and misogynistic views, running amok as they bomb, bully and outbreed their clueless liberal hosts in a bid to build a caliphate. "Do you have a child back in England?" an elderly Los Angelena asked a British reporter on a recent National Review cruise. "No," he said. "You'd better start," she replied. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe." Nor is it by any means the only dynamic. There are a handful of nihilistic young Muslims keen to bomb and destroy and a far larger number sufficiently disaffected that they are prepared to riot. There are also many Europeans keen to see equality and meaningful integration, defending civil liberties and opposing wars against predominantly Muslim lands. But the primary threat to democracy in Europe is not "Islamofascism"–that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning–but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority. For fascism–and the xenophobic, racist and nationalistic elements that are its most vile manifestations–has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe. Its advocates not only run in elections but win them. They control local councils and sit in parliaments. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10 percent of the vote. In Norway it is 22 percent; in Switzerland, 29 percent. In Italy and Austria they have been in government; in Switzerland, where the anti-immigrant Swiss People's Party is the largest party, they still are. This is not new. From Austria to Antwerp, Italy to France, fascists have been performing well at the polls for more than a decade. Nor are they shy about their bigotry. France's Jean-Marie Le Pen has described the Nazi gas chambers as a "detail of history"; Austria's Jörg Haider once thanked a group of Austrian World War II veterans, including former SS officers, for "stick[ing] to their convictions despite the greatest opposition." But the attacks of 9/11, the bombings in Spain and Britain and the riots in France gave the hard right new traction. The polarizing effects of terrorism facilitated the journey of hard-right agendas from the margins to the mainstream. Islamophobia became de rigueur. Recently German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a Christian Democrat party congress that "we must take care that mosque cupolas are not built demonstratively higher than church steeples." In September 2006, British novelist Martin Amis told the Times of London: "There's a definite urge–don't you have it?–to say, 'the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation–further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan…. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children." Far from being the principal purveyors of racial animus in Europe, Muslims are its principal targets. Between 2000 and 2005 officially reported racist violence rose 71 percent in Denmark, 34 percent in France and 21 percent in Ireland. With few governments collecting data on racial crime victims, it has been left to NGOs to record the sharp rise in attacks on Muslims, those believed to be Muslims and Muslim targets. None of this means anti-Semitism and jihadism don't exist among Muslim communities in Europe. But it does provide a context for both. Muslims are a relatively tiny percentage of European citizens–there is a higher proportion of Asians in Utah than Muslims in Italy–and are overwhelmingly concentrated among the poor. More than 40 percent of Bangladeshi men in Britain under the age of 25 are unemployed. All of this excuses nothing but explains a great deal. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain are unemployment and Islamic extremism. Integrating into a society that won't employ you, educate you or house you adequately is no easy feat. Participating in a political culture that scapegoats you is also tough. Attacked as Muslims at home and abroad, they defend themselves as Muslims. Every respected report in Britain has shown a direct link between the war in Iraq and recruitment to Islamist movements. And so the symbiosis of Islamophobes and Islamists is complete, with each thriving on polarization and prejudice: picking at scabs that might have healed, until the blood runs freely. The most potent anti-Semites and bigots in Europe do not live in run-down housing projects but grace the corridors of power. They are not Muslim; they are Christian. The continent is not suffering from some new strain of bigotry imported from the Arab world or the Maghreb–it is simply suffering from one of its oldest viruses harbored among its most established ethnic populations. Gary Younge is the author of No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South (Mississippi) and Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels in the Disunited States (New Press). Copyright © 2007 The Nation
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The Muslims are the new Jews. It seems they have inherited the mantle of despised other and are learning the hate and anti-semitic bigotry that is the foundation of European (and thus America) culture.
As this article points out, Christians have always been more Jew hating and intolerant than Muslims. If that seems different now, Zionism is to blame.
Give me a break, the Jews are the new Jews. Attacks on them are at the highest point in Europe since WWII.
Bligh put the megaphone software away ok. We all know better.
I would if I knew what megaphone software was. Anyway, attacks against anyone because of their religion is unacceptable. There were, however, Over 300 attacks against Jews in France alone last year.
As long as Israel causes trouble they will get attacked in other places.
The I in Israel stands for Idiocy.
Bligh now you know:
http://giyus.org/
Attacks against anyone is wrong I agree but the truth of the matter is that Jewish people are not under threat in Europe or America they are doing quite well for themselves and criticism against Israel does not equal antisemitism or hatred against Jewish people as much as many Zionist organizations want that to be the case. Attacks and discrimination against Muslims in the US and in Europe are at an all time high and getting worse in contrast.
When I mention that Jewish people are doing well and are succesful in America its not my words it the Jerusalem Post's see here:
http://tinyurl.com/2kcmh8
No one wants to be a victim more than a Jew. Hell, they are still raking it in over the holocaust. If they would start respecting the Muslims of the world the attacks on them would decrease.
Hoa binh
Well, my Jewish neighbor seems to be doing ok. That is not what is being discussed. Beating someone, or defacing graves, or setting fire to their place of worship, does not equate to "critisism". Attacks against Muslims should be rightly condemned and prosecuted. It shouldn't be accompanied however by dismissing the rise of Jew-hatred that is endemic in most European countries. Even with the rise in such attacks, they do not approach the level of attacks being directed at Jews in Europe. And Jews make up a far smaller percentage of the population. Oh, and no- I'm not a Jew.
Kelmer;
"As long as Israel causes trouble they will get attacked in other places.
The I in Israel stands for Idiocy."
Couldn't that be said for Muslims vis a vis Al-Qaida?
but bligh does happen to be the devil's advocate.
Regarding the "new Jews", it seems to me that hostility to both Jews and Muslims is on the rise, for various reasons. In the case of the Muslims, hostility here in North America goes back to the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and the abduction of US diplomats and the chants of "death to America" that were heard by incomprehending North Americans, 99.9999% of whom were utterly ignorant of the historical factors that produced anti-US feeling in Iran. Far more importantly, the only time a North American city has ever been bombed so far, on 11 September 2001, it was Muslims who did it. That bombing was a profound shock to us. North American cities are not supposed to be bombed. It goes against our whole perception of our place in the world and the way the world is supposed to function. So when a group of Arabs and Muslims bombed New York and Washington, naturally that produced a hostile reaction. In Europe on the other hand, hostility towards Muslims is analogous to hostility towards Mexicans in northern America. In Europe, dark-skinned poor immigrants are usually Muslims; in northern America they are usually Mexicans. Being dark-skinned, poor and foreign will get you in trouble, whether you're Muslim, Christian or whatever.
Regarding anti-Semitism, I have the distinct impression that hostility towards Jews is on the rise in North America. I think that this hostility tends to be more a phenomenon of the left and of people who are sympathetic to the Palestinians. Jews have been closely identified with the State of Israel for so long that it is almost natural that any increase in sympathy for the Palestinians is going to produce a proportional decline in favourable feelings about Jews (I say this by way of explanation, not justification). There is also a growing perception that Jews have political influence out of proportion to their numbers in North America, and that has produced a negative backlash. I admit that I have acquired this impression almost exclusively from my observations of Internet feedback features like this one. So maybe I'm getting a distorted image of what's really going on out there in the society. I would be most interested in getting the feedback of others on this matter.
Mark Marshall
Toronto
Canada
Certainly it matters what the press reports, but remember that when you read these things, you are viewing the world through the eyes of someone else.
There are some very bad forces at work in the world. And there exist now forces for good, the likes of which have never before existed.
Perhaps what is most important is what you hold in your own awareness, whether you're growing in your ability to handle diversity, whether you're increasing you own internal peace and harmony—or whether you're adding fuel to the fired of contention.
Diversity abounds in the universe. Thorns have their place on the stem of the rose along with the soft blossom. There is no conflict, they are there together. Each has its purpose.
Just as the great variety of musicians in a symphony orchestra unite to create beautiful sounds while retaining their individuality in the playing from one musical score, mankind, experiencing his peaceful inner nature, can grow to live as an expression of that peaceful, universal inner life, and live less on the surface of life, where differences will always naturally exist.
The world is being thrown together as a result of many disparate forces. The outcome depends on each individual, what he is doing, being, and becoming in the process of life.
Take the highest knowledge available, if you can, and apply it to your life, to create peace within yourself and lead the world from that level.
www.tm.org—timeless knowledge from the Vedic Tradition of India is available and used throughout the world by people of all stripes…
Why does it have to be a new anything?
we have been hating our cousins and those who look slightly different and extrapolating it to the nearest tribe who speak a different language and the non believer.
We have to look within ourselves in a fundamentally deeper way to be inclusionary.
Give up this petty stuff and honestly, give up your beliefs.
Then we might be able to talk.
If we can not do it ourselves, how can you expect those that perpetrate crimes to be able to do it?
love
Zero
This is really a wonderful article and I agree with the comments in general. The only thing I can add is that racism and intolerance towards ANY group of people, whether on the basis of their ethnicity, colour, religious convictions or social status has to be fought and opposed tooth and nail without any semblance of compromise.
I wonder what the response would be if someone wanted to build a Catholic Church in Saudi Arabia? Somehow, I have a feeling that it would go far beyond being bombarded with sausages.
'Islamophobia' on the rise in Europe, report says
Report cites attacks and discrimination
The Associated PressPublished: 2006-12-18 14:49:23
VIENNA: "Islamophobia" is on the rise across Europe, where many Muslims are menaced and misunderstood — some on a daily basis — the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia said Monday in a new report.
The Vienna-based center, which tracks ethnic and religious bias across the 25-country European Union, said Muslims routinely suffered problems ranging from physical attacks to discrimination in the job and housing markets.
It called on leaders to strengthen policies on integration, and on Muslims to "engage more actively in public life" to counter negative perceptions driven by terrorism or violence, such as the backlash this year caused by cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
"The key word is 'respect,'" said Beate Winkler, director of the group. "People need to feel respected and included. We need to highlight the common ground that we have."
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many of Europe's nearly 13 million Muslims feel "they have been put under a general suspicion of terrorism," Winkler said.
The report listed hundreds of cases of violence or threats against Muslims in the EU since 2004.
The incidents include vandalism against mosques and Islamic centers, abuse against women wearing Islamic head scarves, and attacks, such as one by a gang carrying baseball bats emblazoned with swastikas and racist slogans that targeted a Somali family in Denmark.
Muslims are all too often "disproportionately represented" in unemployment statistics, and many are well behind the European mainstream in education and housing conditions, the report says.
It cites a 2004 study by the University of Paris, which replied to 258 job advertisements for a sales position and concluded that an applicant with a North African background was five times less likely to get a positive reply.
"Many European Muslims, particularly young people, face barriers to their social advancement," said the report. "This could give rise to a feeling of hopelessness and social exclusion."
But Carla Amina Baghajati, a spokeswoman for Austria's Islamic community, said she was unnerved by inflammatory comments posted on Web forums Monday by people suggesting Muslims had brought their troubles upon themselves.
"We have to be very careful that making Islamophobia a general issue is not counterproductive," she said. "There's the danger that people say, 'Well, he deserves it.' We have to create a climate that makes it possible to overcome prejudice and racism without showing Muslims as victims."
The monitoring center called on EU countries to improve "equal access to employment" for Muslim job seekers, revise school policies and textbooks to offer more balanced perspectives on Western culture, and require "discussion of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia."
In accompanying interviews with 58 Muslims from 10 EU countries, many respondents bitterly complained of feeling like second-class citizens because of perceptions that the Islamic community is intolerant of Western values and supportive of terrorist groups.
A Muslim woman living in Austria, told the center: "We face Islamophobia in daily life: small incidents, small things … Somebody walks his dog and says, 'Fass!'" — German for "Attack!"
Yet even a crisis can provide opportunities to improve relations, the center said, highlighting how the authorities and clerics in Britain worked together to mitigate tensions after bombings on the London transit system in July 2005 triggered a sharp increase in Islamophobic incidents.
"Integration is a two-way street," said Anastasia Crickley, chairwoman of the group's board. "There is no room for complacency."
"The most potent anti-Semites and bigots in Europe do not live in run-down housing projects but grace the corridors of power. They are not Muslim; they are Christian."
Why does that sound so familiar?
"At a time when the United States is encouraging greater religious freedom in Muslim nations, soldiers on the battlefield have told disturbing stories of being force-fed fundamentalist Christianity by highly controversial, apocalyptic "End Times" evangelists, who have infiltrated US military installations throughout the world with the blessing of high-level officials at the Pentagon.
A couple of weeks ago, the White House sent out Christmas cards signed by President Bush and his wife Laura that contained a Biblical passage from the Old Testament…" (Leopold, Truthout, 12-21-07.)
Europe is simply playing follow the crazy leader…
bligh, what part of France, been here a bit, many Jews, have not seen an attack.
I am always amazed, although, when referring to a comment that pertains to a Jew the word anti-Semite runs right on in, anti-Semitic pertaining to Jews only was not used until the late 1900's. You darn well know Arabs are Semites. I love "since WWII", I always wonder why it is Jews think they own the word 'Genocide'. You know that is not true, as well.
I have been defending my young Muslim daughter(no, I am not Muslim) since post 9/11 from verbal and physical assault. I will not do your work for you. Look up stats on attacks on Muslims post 9/11, not including the 1.3 MIL Iraqis, right, and check Europe they seem to be great at it.
Mark I posted the JPost article because I believe Jewish success is a good thing it shows that America is very tolerant towards the Jewish people and that Jews are welcome and safe in this country and free to be succesful which is a testement to the American people in general. Many Jews are actually leaving Israel to live in the United States. We have a museum to remeber the Holocaust here and students are taught about this in the classrooms and Americans are proud of the fact that we fred the Jewish people from Germany's horrendous death camps in the 1940's. I'm not saying anti-semitism doesn't exist in America because there are instances of it I'm simply saying that bligh is wrong when he says Jewish people are in danger in the US and Europe the way they were during the rise of Hitler. That's simply untrue.
There is currently a backlash against Zionism because of the treatement of Palestinians but there should be one. People are finally seeing through 1/2 a century of propoganda and understanding the other side of the story. Its about time they do before there are no longer any Palestinians left in the Holy Land at all. A peaceful settlement must come about for the Israelis and Arabs.
Contrast this with how Muslims are treated in the US or Europe where in both places there is open discrimination and hatred directed at Muslims where an American born Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, is attacked for wanting to take the oath of office on the Holy Quran. Where many people justify waterboarding and other torture against Muslims. No 911 does not justify or explain this discrimination as it existed before then and even before the Iranian Revolution. It existed in Europe from the time of the crusades and this racism and Islamophobia was brought over to the US.
I just happened to pick up this translated news story from an Italian site; don't know whether it's a Berlusconi outfit or not. If accurate, Iran is also looking forward to an Islamic Europe.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1696552901
Iran: Europe will become a Muslim continent, says Khamenei's spokesman
Tehran, 21 Dec. (AKI) - Europe will eventually become a Muslim continent, according to a representative of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
"In a dozen years, Europe will be an Islamic continent," said Rasul Jalilzadeh on Friday as he was speaking to the basiji, a voluntary organisation in the capital Tehran.
"The Islamisation of the European continent is imminent and this step favours the arrival of the Mahdi," he said, referring to the 12th imam of Shiite Islam.
Shiites believe that the Imam Mahdi, who disppeared as an adolescent, will return to bring an end to chaos and bring universal justice.
Rasul Jalilzadeh believes that "the Islamisation of Europe is one of the consequences of the Islamic revolution in Iran" in that "the messages and values that this revolution has transmitted to the Europeans, to convince them "to abandon their current faiths and convert to Shiite Islam."
Several things I would like to add after reading this article and the discussion. First, I hate to encounter the attitude that "as long as Israel causes trouble they will be attacked in other places." That is an unfortunate statement based on many assumptions and also a logic that would lend itself to the same anti-Muslim attacks going on around the world, mainly that Jews as a monolithic group are sympathetic to the crimes of Israel's government and are a part of the problem, and that they thus deserve the resulting racist backlash. That is a horrible attitude. Attacks against people based on their religion and ethnicity should be uniformly rejected. I'm very sympathetic to the Israelis myself, and I would think that a lot of Americans would be, because they too are a country of strongly divided opinions who are led into disaster by a rogue government, much like Americans are, except that in their case, the government of Israel pursues policies that make their country extremely unsafe and vulnerable to attacks from organized groups located right next door, rather than from far away as in the case of the USA. A lot of Israelis are working hard for peace, but it is really difficult in a country where the backlash against peace activism includes being ostracized as traitors (sound familiar? But I think in Israel it is even harsher). As American supporters of peace and justice, we need to support Israelis that are working to protect human rights and create a peaceful future for the people of Israel and Palestine. Writing off anti-semitic attacks in Europe as justifiable is no help; it is hate, and it is the attitude that we are trying to change as we work towards a peaceful future for all.
Furthermore, many of the anti-Jewish attacks in Europe are traceable to the same elements that are carrying out attacks against Muslims. Europe has a strong xenophobic current that was directed against the Jews so frequently and to atrocious ends throughout history, and this same xenophobic current is now being directed against Muslims and other immigrants. Countries like Germany are seeing a resurgence in Neo-Nazism that attacks both Jews and Muslims. Spain has seen a recent rash of anti-immigrant attacks targeting people from South America who are neither Jews nor Muslims. There is a bigger problem in Europe, a problem of xenophobic nationalism that has no place in a globalized world of immigration, a world where people from the very former colonies created by Europe are now looking to be mobile in search of work and better living conditions. Europe is simply going to have to accept that the best way to create a peaceful and prosperous future is to be accepting and welcoming towards immigrants and to make them a part of society. Just as the Jews have been an important part of Europe for time immemorial, immigrants from all over the world are helping Europe build a prosperous future.
Europe, afterall, has no other choice. With falling birthrates, population decline in places like Germany and France would lead to economic decline. Immigration will prevent that. But only if everyone works together to welcome immigrants and make them a part of society.
Militant Liberal: thank you for your contribution. It may very well be true that Rasul Jalilzadeh said what was attributed to him in that website - that he predicts that Europe will become Muslim. After all, Jalilzadeh is Muslim, and Muslims believe that the Muslim religion is the Truth. For a person who believes in Islam to predict that Islamic truth will be embraced in the future by parts of the world that so far have resisted it strikes me as no more sinister than for a person who believes in democracy to predict that democracy will take hold in parts of the world where it has historically been weak - the Middle East, for example. And for that matter, a person who believes in Christianity may very well predict that some day all of humanity will accept the true message of Jesus Christ. Why not?
But it goes without saying - I hope - that any effort to spread democracy or any other belief system by force is totally unacceptable to civilized people everywhere.
Mark Marshall
Toronto
O roe, I never used the word Anti-Semite once, so I don't know what the heck you are talking about. I learned long ago never to use that word or some knucklehead will jump back with "Arabs are Semites too". (So I guess I could say someone was "inhuman" because I myself am a human). I use a much better term - Jew Hatred. And in Europe, between the skinheads and some parts of the Muslim population, it is on the rise. But again, NO attacks based on a persons race, religion, ect. should be tolerated in the least.
"For fascism–and the xenophobic, racist and nationalistic elements that are its most vile manifestations–has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe. Its advocates not only run in elections but win them. They control local councils and sit in parliaments. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10 percent of the vote."
This has been the case for a long time in Europe, the reason being that fairer electoral systems, such as proportional reprsentation, give minority parties a chance. Not mentioned is that parties on the left such as the Greens and Communists often get more than 10 percent as well. The Greens are huge in Germany and France has one the biggest communist parties in the world. If the US had a fair electoral system it would too see extremist parties getting power. In Britain, far-right parties have virtually no power, yet the author portrays Britain in the same light as other European countries. The reason is that Britain has a first-past-the-post electoral system like the US, effectively shutting minority parties out.
And that is why our system is better. I do not really want the KKK party in congress. Nor the Communists.
One solution could be that Italy will GUARANTEE the safety of one new mosque for every now church who´s safety is GUARANTEED in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia.
Greaserman there are churches all over the Islamic world. When I was in Kuwait I visited a Catholic church which was located in downtown Kuwait City and open to the public. I also visited a Catholic church in Tunis, Tunisia and saw ancient Christian mosaics from the time of the Roman Empire preserved honorably in Tunis's Bardo Museum. In Syria and Lebanon and Egypt and Turkey churches are abundant. The one exception in the Islamic world is Saudi Arabia and Muslims will tell you the Saudis are disrepectful of other faiths as well as Islam. Majority of Muslims out there really don't like the strict Wahhabi Salaffi movement practiced by the Saudi gov't and this movement also rejects Shia and Sufi Muslims in addition to other religions. Islam as it is practiced by the majority of its 1 billion adherents is the only religion on earth aside from Christianity that recognizes and honors Jesus (peace be upon him) and the Virgin Mary (peace be upon her. The Qu'ran itself calls Christians and Jews people of the book and it has an entire chapter devoted to the Virgin Mary something the bible itself does not have. Islam honors the prophets of Judaism and Christianity and this is found in the Qu'ran.
Obviously from all your posts your an extreme Islamophobe. You've only proved the authors point. Hatred against Islam is on the rise thanks for demonstrating that.
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=254
Muslims in Europe: Economic Worries Top Concerns About Religious and Cultural Identity
Few Signs of Backlash From Western Europeans
Released: 07.06.06
Summary of Findings
Muslims in Europe worry about their future, but their concern is more economic than religious or cultural. And while there are some signs of tension between Europe's majority populations and its Muslim minorities, Muslims there do not generally believe that most Europeans are hostile toward people of their faith. Still, over a third of Muslims in France and one-in-four in Spain say they have had a bad experience as a result of their religion or ethnicity
However, there is little evidence of a widespread backlash against Muslim immigrants among the general publics in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. Majorities continue to express concerns about rising Islamic identity and extremism, but those worries have not intensified in most of the countries surveyed over the past 12 months; a turbulent period that included the London subway bombings, the French riots, and the Danish cartoon controversy.
Opinions held by Muslims in Europe - as well as opinions about Muslims among Europe's majority populations - vary significantly by country. No clear European point of view emerges with regard to the Muslim experience, either among Muslims or in the majority populations on many issues.
(more at the link
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=253
The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other
Europe's Muslims More Moderate
Released: 06.22.06
Introduction and Summary
After a year marked by riots over cartoon portrayals of Muhammad, a major terrorist attack in London, and continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Muslims and Westerners are convinced that relations between them are generally bad these days. Many in the West see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and as lacking tolerance. Meanwhile, Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy - as well as violent and fanatical.
A rare point of agreement between Westerners and Muslims is that both believe that Muslim nations should be more economically prosperous than they are today. But they gauge the problem quite differently. Muslim publics have an aggrieved view of the West - they are much more likely than Americans or Western Europeans to blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity. For their part, Western publics instead point to government corruption, lack of education and Islamic fundamentalism as the biggest obstacles to Muslim prosperity.
Nothing highlights the divide between Muslims and the West more clearly than their responses to the uproar this past winter over cartoon depictions of Muhammad. Most people in Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey blame the controversy on Western nations' disrespect for the Islamic religion. In contrast, majorities of Americans and Western Europeans who have heard of the controversy say Muslims' intolerance to different points of view is more to blame
The chasm between Muslims and the West is also seen in judgments about how the other civilization treats women. Western publics, by lopsided margins, do not think of Muslims as "respectful of women." But half or more in four of the five Muslim publics surveyed say the same thing about people in the West.
Yet despite the deep attitudinal divide between Western and Muslim publics, the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey also finds that the views of each toward the other are far from uniformly negative. For example, even in the wake of the tumultuous events of the past year, solid majorities in France, Great Britain and the U.S. retain overall favorable opinions of Muslims. However, positive opinions of Muslims have declined sharply in Spain over the past year (from 46% to 29%), and more modestly in Great Britain (from 72% to 63%).
(more at the link)
2007 Hate Crime Survey - Companion Survey on Islamophobia - Hostility and Violence toward Muslims
Human Rights First
Obstacles to religious freedom for Muslims that provide a backdrop to violence have included the harassment of women wearing Islamic dress, and the denial of permits to build mosques or to establish religious schools - with the latter leaving most Muslims seeking religious training no alternative other than to attend schools in Muslim countries. In its periodic reports on discrimination in the Council of Europe, the anti-discrimination body the European Commission on Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) highlights bars on establishing places of worship or schools by Muslims as an ongoing problem of discrimination. Proposals for the building of mosques continue to be the object of political opposition in many countries.
In Germany, ECRI observes, Muslims faced continued discrimination with respect to "opening of places of worship and kindergartens or provision of religious instruction in schools." Muslim women who wear the headscarf, in turn, are "particularly vulnerable" to harassment and discrimination in schools and employment.[2]
In Greece, there is no official mosque available for the some 200,000 Muslims who live in the Athens area, due to opposition from the Greek Orthodox Church over the location and funding of such a mosque. Muslims have been obliged to worship in makeshift settings in homes and apartments. After thirty years of negotiation, the government in July 2006 said it would authorize the building of Athens' first official mosque, but no time-table for the construction was announced.[3]
In Norway, Vidar Kleppe, an opposition political leader, has pledged to block the building of a new mosque in Kristiansand, declaring that the proposed mosque would be "a beachhead for criminal activity and inhumane attitudes," and that "[w]e will not have a Muslim symbol in our city." The city's mayor spoke to condemn the statement, declaring that: "You can't say things like this. We can criticize specific events but not generalize about an entire religion."[4]
In Spain, ECRI reported in 2006 that Muslims "have experienced opposition, sometimes with explicitly racist content, when pursuing plans to open places of worship."[5]
The absence of equal treatment in many parts of Europe extends even to the dead, as permits to establish Muslim cemeteries are also frequently denied. There has been some limited progress. The official plan to allow a mosque to be built in Athens, for example, includes also provisions for the first Muslim cemetery to be established there.[6] In September 2006, moreover, the first Muslim cemetery in Denmark opened in Brøndby, south of Copenhagen, after fifteen years of protests and demands. The dead of Denmark's estimated 200,000 Muslims had hitherto been buried in Muslim sections of public cemeteries or shipped abroad for burial.[7] But even before it opened, racist vandals in July 2006 vandalized the new cemetery with swastikas and by driving a car across the plot.[8]
Vandalism in Muslim cemeteries or in Muslim sections of public cemeteries has likewise occurred in France and the Russian Federation. In France, in April 2007, vandals daubed Nazi slogans and swastikas on about 50 graves in the Muslim section of a WWI cemetery. The act was decried by then-French President Jacques Chirac as "an unspeakable act that scars the conscience."[9] In the Russian Federation, on August 3, 2006 vandals smashed about ten gravestones and memorials in a closed Muslim cemetery in Yekaterinburg.[10]On August 6, 2006, vandals desecrated a number of Muslim gravestones in a cemetery in the village of Reamash in the Moscow region. The leader of the Sergeev Posad Muslim community was quoted as saying that "we believe that this crime was committed on the basis of racial and religious hatred."[11]
Attacks on Places of Worship
Mosques and other places of worship were particular targets of vandalism and arson in 2005 and 2006. In some incidents, religious texts were also desecrated and destroyed.
In Austria, unknown attackers hurled rocks through the windows of a mosque on September 24, 2005 in Linz.[12] Prior to that, in 2003, unknown assailants vandalized a Muslim cemetery in the same city.[13]
In the Netherlands, in Rotterdam, on June 15, 2005, a man known as a follower of extreme right organizations set fire to the Surinamese Djama Mahid Shaan-e-Islam mosque. The attackers wrote epithets on the walls of the mosque including "Theo rest in peace," "no mosques in the south," and "Lonsdale."[14]
In the Russian Federation, in September 2006, attackers broke windows and threw gasoline bombs into a mosque in the city of Yaroslavl as a prayer service was underway, but no injuries were reported. The attack, in which windows were also broken in cars parked by the mosque, came one day after the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. Although reported by religious leaders there, police contacted by the press reportedly said they were unaware of the incident.[15]
In Spain, in Soria, on January 26, 2006, assailants burned a copy of the Koran and threw other religious books in a trash can outside a mosque. Three months before, the mosque had been defaced with graffiti. [16]
Also in Spain over the Easter weekend in 2006, arsonists attacked the Sidi Bel Abbas sanctuary, a mosque located in the city of Cueta. The attack came three months after arsonists attacked a similar sanctuary within the enclave.[17]
In the United Kingdom, a rash of attacks on mosques and Muslim religious centers followed the terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005. They included the following:
On July 8:
Attackers threw fire-bombs at the Al Madina Jamia mosque in Leeds. [18]
Attackers threw stones at the Jamia mosque in Totterdown, Bristol.
Two men poured gasoline through the letter-box of the Shajala mosque, in Birkenhead, Wirral, setting the building alight. Boshir Ullah, an elderly imam at the mosque, was trapped in his upstairs bedroom before firefighters extinguished the blaze and pulled him to safety. Paramedics treated the victim for smoke inhalation. The mosque had previously been damaged by fire bombs after the September 11, 2001 attacks.[19]
Arsonists attempted to set fire to the Jamiat Tablighul Islam Mosque in Armley, Leeds, by throwing a burning cloth through a window, according to police.[20]
On July 9:
Vandals broke seven windows at the Shajalal mosque in Easton, Bristol.[21]
Vandals smashed 19 windows at the mosque at the Mazahirul Uloom Education and Cultural Institution, in London. The mosque had been a target of threatening hate mail, with one note reading: "You filthy Muslim dogs. You will be torched this Friday. Many Muslim pigs will burn."[22]
On July 10:
A fire-bomb attack on the Tan Bank, Wellington mosque, in Shropshire was prevented from damaging its interior by fire services.[23]
Two women vandalized the Islamic Centre, in Rose Lane, Norwich, breaking four windows.[24]
On July 18:
Vandals broke into the Shah Jalal Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre in Cathays, Cardiff (Wales) and strewed the interior with animal parts.[25]
In the United States, in Lubbock, Texas, attackers vandalized a mosque three times in the month of October. In the most recent attack, on October 26, 2006, vandals spray-painted the word "redemption" on the exterior of the building. Vandals had trampled on the mosque's flower bed and smashed its outdoor lights in two previous incidents.[26]
Also in the United States, in Clarksville, Tennessee, a defaced copy of the Koran was found on the steps of the Islamic Center of Clarksville, on April 7, 2007. The Koran was also smeared with two strips of bacon. Authorities labeled the incident a hate crime and officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation were also involved in the investigation.[27]
Assaults on Individuals
Violent attacks are another form of anti-Muslim sentiment and prejudice that is commonly termed Islamophobia. The everyday violence of anti-Muslim bias is both symbolic of larger problems of discrimination and a powerful instrument of intimidation.
Accounts of individual cases and the reports of European antidiscrimination bodies have highlighted the prevalence of attacks on "visible" minorities, and in particular people who are distinguished by distinctive clothing or other signs of faith. ECRI, in its most recent report on Austria, for example, observes that Muslims are "particularly vulnerable to harassment and discrimination when displaying visible signs of their faith."[28]
While no specific incident triggered an international wave of anti-Muslim violence in 2006, attacks took place within the regional context of increasingly polarized political debates concerning Muslim integration within the European Union. Attacks were frequently both racist and anti-Muslim, fueled by a hatred of immigrants and minorities made even more volatile by religion. These incidents took the form of personal assaults on individuals identified, rightly or wrongly, as Muslims. In a number of reported incidents, attacks motivated by racist and religious hatred resulted in murder.
In Belgium, on May 11, 2006, anti-immigrant fanatic Hans Van Themsche murdered 24-year-old Oulemata Oudibo, a pregnant Malian au pair, and the two-year-old Belgian infant in her charge, Luna Drowart. Shortly before he had shot and seriously wounded Songul Koç, a woman of Turkish origin wearing a Muslim headscarf, as she sat on a bench reading. The attacker was shot and detained by police soon afterward. Citizens mobilized to remember the victims of the attacks of May 11 and other incidents of racist violence with a March Against Racism in Antwerp on May 26, 2006.[29]
Also in Belgium, on April 30, 2006, 23-year-old Moroccan immigrant Mohammed Bouazza was reportedly chased by racist white youths after an incident outside an Antwerp nightclub and later found drowned in the Schelde River.[30]
In Denmark, on July 9, 2005 an unidentified man in Copenhagen reportedly shouted "London" as he attacked a Sikh bus driver with a baseball bat, having mistaken him for a Muslim.[31]
In Poland, on July 22, 2006, at least four men attacked Moroccan actor Abdel M. at an antiracism festival in the northern city of Olsztyn, hitting him over the head with a bottle and stabbing him repeatedly, leaving him in critical condition. Abdel M., a member of the Migrator troupe of refugee actors, had just finished a performance about the life of refugees in Poland when he was attacked. Cameroonian national Simon Mol, who heads the theatre group, said "I spoke to him when he regained conscious and he told me that before he was attacked his attackers said there were 'too many foreigners.'"[32]
In the Russian Federation, as Human Rights First reported in its 2006 report Minorities Under Siege: Hate Crimes and Related Intolerance in the Russian Federation, people from the Caucasus and Central Asia - both Russian citizens and foreigners - are probably the group suffering the highest number of racist attacks. At the same time, reporting of attacks on migrants from these areas and others who have not established Russian nationality probably remains the least comprehensive, as these victims also tend to fear police abuse or arrest and are least likely to report bias-motivated attacks. The attacks come in an environment in which discrimination against non-Slavic, non-Orthodox Russian citizens is openly advocated. Attacks on people from these regions are generally perceived to be motivated by racism, but sometimes have an overlay of religious hatred and intolerance: most people from the Caucasus and Central Asia are Muslims.
In the United Kingdom, there were a number of serious incidents in 2006: on June 9, 34-year-old Pierre Brabant confronted Imam Said Jaziri outside the St. Michael mosque, brandishing a knife and remarking, "Do you want to die a Martyr?" before asking "'Are you carrying belts full of explosives?" The assailant fled on foot without physically injuring the imam. Police arrived on the scene moments later and arrested Brabant. Police subsequently announced that they were treating the incident as a hate crime.[33]
On July 7, Alan Young walked into a health center in Northhampton and punched a Muslim man in the face. Young made remarks about Muslims and shouted it was "kill a Muslim day." He made further comments about Muslims and hit another Asian man on a nearby property. Young's actions came on the first anniversary of the July 7 terrorist attacks. Young admitted to the charges of common assault, religiously aggravated assault, and harassment and was given a four-month suspended jail sentence.[34]
On January 11, 2007, a white male in his twenties attacked a 37-year-old Muslim woman in Southampton. According to police, the assailant hurled racial slurs at the woman and unsuccessfully tried to pull off her veil. The unidentified victim resisted and managed to flee the scene without further harm.[35]
In the United States, in Brooklyn, New York, on the night of October 29, 2006, a group of five teenagers assaulted Shahid Amber, a 24-year-old Pakistani immigrant while hurling anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slurs at him, calling him a "terrorist," and shouting "Go back to your country." The attackers reportedly spit on him, knocked him to the ground, kicked him, and punched him in the head and body with brass knuckles. Police arrested the five suspects, who were charged with assault as a hate crime, gang assault, and possession of a deadly weapon. The five reportedly pled not guilty to the charges.[36]
Hostility towards Muslims
In some cases, crimes attributed to Muslim immigrants, rightly or wrongly, became the object of national outrage and fueled racist violence. In Belgium, authorities' attribution of the April 12, 2006 robbery and murder of white Belgian teenager Joe Van Holsbeeck to young "North Africans" set off a national outpouring of grief and outrage.[37] Much of the outrage was directed at Belgium's large Moroccan minority, and while some Muslim leaders themselves called for people to turn in the suspects if they knew them, others were reviled for failing to help produce the killers.[38]
More than 80,000 people went into the Brussels streets in solidarity with the victim's family. The family of the slain boy had opposed efforts by the political right to transform the march into an anti-immigration demonstration. His mother spoke out firmly to condemn anti-immigration parties that tried to capitalize upon the tragedy, declaring that: "Nobody should come to me, asking me to hate all Arabs…. The youths who killed my son were scum. It's that kind of individual that inspires hatred in me…But don't come to me making generalizations. Scum can be found everywhere."[39]
Almost two weeks after the murder, authorities confirmed that the suspects were not in fact North Africans when two Polish nationals were arrested and charged with the murder. Some national authorities expressed remorse for the public branding of the North African community as complicit in the killings. Minister of Justice Laurette Onkelinx spoke out clearly in this regard in criticizing those who "without knowledge of the results of the investigation had pinpointed a culprit, stigmatized an ethnic community." "Now," he added, "they have to face their own conscience."[40]
In the United Kingdom, Muslim organizations reported increased levels of hostility and harassment against Muslim women following the continued public debates over a ban on Muslim headscarves. In October, British Labor Party leader Jack Straw told a local newspaper that the Muslim niqab - a veil which fully covers the face - constitutes a "visible statement of separation and of difference" and that it should be banned in the public square. While Straw's comments received support from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other officials in the U.K. government, Muslim organizations in Britain, like the Muslim Safety Forum, reported that Straw's comments led to an increase in harassment and attacks against women that wear Muslim headscarves.[41] The visibility of Muslim women who wear a headscarf make them easy targets for those who wish to carry out an indiscriminate attack on a symbol of Islam.
For full PDF report:
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/discrimination/reports.asp?country=&id=28&misc1=survey-islamophobia2
Oh, gimme a break! 71% rise of anti-Muslim attacks in Denmark in 2006 - why didn't you bother to mention why? And what the numbers were before, like close to zero, right? Because Muslims burned down Danish embassies in Muslim countries, threatened Danish tourists in the Middle East, boycotted Danish products et al. Just because of some cartoons in a paper! So what one side does is perfectly ok, but the other side is supposed to just endure it? That's not the way average people react.
The problem is rather that Muslims flock to Europe without anybody actually needing them. Many European countries don't have immigration quotas. Most Europeans don't want Muslim immigration but got it nevertheless for various reasons.
The question is: Do they HAVE to accept them whole-heartedly? I mean, if a group of people gate-crashes your party, do you have to love them? And that's about what happened. THEY wanted to come, it wasn't like Europeans lured them to come for the past 20 years.
Once there, though, far too many either keep very much to themselves - many women from Muslim countries have definitely been discouraged from even learning the local language, let alone participate in any activities of their local society - so of course many people quite rightly view Muslim immigrants as people who just want to make use of a superior European infrastructure without wanting to be part of their new home!
Internet and satellite TV have equally contributed to their never really "arriving". IMO it's a much-overlooked fact when discussing immigrants' integration or lack of same (and this includes America) that it is pretty easy nowadays to still "live" in the old home country via TV and the cyberspace. In the old days, all you could do is exchange some letters or call home once in a blue moon, once you left your home town.
Immigrants' minds are very much in their homelands while their bodies live in another country these days, in other words. Integration is thus becoming more and more difficult.
Anyway, I fail to see any moral obligation to accept a neighbor who just uses the amenities his new home offers without giving anything in return and without actually wanting to be part of his new homeland. An immigrant who just wants to be able to send home as much money as possible, period.
The article is a particularly strange verdict from an American - if all immigrants to America had behaved the way most Muslims behave in Europe, there would be no "America".
There's freedom of speech and there is hate speech. The cartoons promoted hate speech and were offensive to Muslims. Muslims don't even allow any pictures of Mohammed to be shown to begin with even potraits of Mohammed in a mosque for example. Statues do no exist inside mosques as they do in churches. If the Danish paper had published anti-semitic pictures these too would be hate speech and it would be equally outrageous and offensive. Why the double standard with Islam? Why do something like that except to purposely provoke a reaction?
That being said there were some Muslims around the world that over-reacted with riots etc. This was wrong and should be clearly said so. Lets put things into context. This all didn't happen in a vacuum.
Araquin—-guess you do not adhere to the belief that we are all ONE. Too bad….if you did, you might actually have more Love and Light in your life. Nothing makes me sadder than when human beings wilfully blind themselves and take the attitude of separation, rather than inter-connectedness and inter-dependency. The TRUTH of this will be more apparent in the not-too-distant-future.
"Semite" is a racial term, same as "negro" or "caucasian". It refers to people of middle east descent. It does not mean "jew", specifically. That understood, the anti-muslim attitudes are simply anti-semitic. The story of modern israel is that of semites pushed out of their homes by european settlers. European? Well, I've seen TV footage of the israelis, and those guys are white.