International Islamic News Agency

With the violence continuing in Syria, sectarian tension ever present in Iraq, Afghanistan still struggling to establish security and Somalia trying to have some sort of normalcy, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) certainly has a lot on its plate to handle.

As if that’s not enough, there are also issues of economic hardships, natural disasters and internal strife afflicting some OIC member states from Africa toAsia. In an interview with Arab News daily, OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu touched on the recent developments in the Arab world and spotlights some of the other issues, such as Muslim refugees, Islamophobia, human rights and Muslim minorities, which people might not be aware of as being also on the agenda of concern to the OIC.

The OIC has just organized with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees the first international conference exclusively on refugees in the Muslim world. What is the significance of this conference and what are the key decisions that came out of it?

The International Ministerial Conference on Refugees in the Muslim World held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan(May 11-12), was indeed a significant step in the course of the OIC endeavors in the humanitarian arena. It was an issue-specific conference with a sharp focus on one of the most important humanitarian files, the plight of refugees hosted by OIC member sates, who constitute more than 50 percent of the total number of refugees in the world. The conference was held under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and came as a result of the political will and resolve of the OIC member states to address this issue by highlighting its significance and underscoring the need for lasting solutions that will help in peace, stability and development.

The partnership between the OIC and UNHCR was crucial in this process, and it has been effectively generating momentum, which enriched and supported the process that led to the convening of the conference. In fact, the conference is not to be seen as a one-time event, but as part of an ongoing process to deal with the humanitarian concerns and actions related to refugees in the Muslim world. In this regard, the conference was also an opportunity to demonstrate the need for enhancing international burden-sharing and the need for providing more resources to the UNHCR by the international community to meet its obligations toward these refugee situations.

The Ashgabat Declaration, issued by the conference, is an important document that demonstrates the continued and enhanced OIC humanitarian activities in collaboration with the United Nations and other regional and international actors. We were explicit in stressing the role of the OIC in this humanitarian domain and called upon all to work toward sustained and durable solutions within a process of burden-sharing and coordination with the international community. The OIC secretariat will continue to follow up on actions on refugee matters as part of the activities of its humanitarian department and in line with OIC resolutions related to this important humanitarian issue.

Is there a concern that with the ongoing violence inSyriathere will be more refugees, thus increasing the burden on the neighboring countries that already host thousands of refugees? What is the OIC doing for the Syrian refugees and internally displaced people?

The OIC is indeed concerned with the plight of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries. In this regard, the OIC has been urging its member states and the international community to continue to provide support to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to enable it in its endeavors to effectively assist Syrian refugees. At the same time, the OIC strongly urges for political solutions to the situation in Syriathat would stop the bloodshed and violence.

As long as the conflict continues withinSyria, there is the likelihood of more refugees crossing into neighboring countries. There are also possibilities of seeing more internally displaced persons withinSyria as a result of this conflict. That is why we call for a two-pronged approach. One is humanitarian, by mobilizing more international community resources to assist refugees and internally displaced persons; two is political, by finding political solutions to stop the conflict in the interest ofSyria and the overall region.

At the 9th Islamic Conference of Information Ministers held this month inGabonyou announced that the ministers agreed to launch a media campaign including an OIC satellite channel to present the real image of Islam. Could you tell us more about this?

The media are a very important element in countering Islamophobia and presenting the real Islam, because they inform the public, shape its opinion and influence its attitude. Therefore, the information ministers of the OIC member states at their last conference in Gabonin April agreed to coordinate their efforts in highlighting Islamic issues, confront anti-Islamic stereotypes, and support Islamic causes. The comprehensive media campaign aims to combat prejudice against Islam and Muslim communities, especially in the West, with a view to foster respect for cultural diversity and religious pluralism, while raising awareness about the positive contributions of Muslims to promote tolerance and understanding.

The plan has short, medium and long-term goals including seminars, workshops, publications and productions, and one of the proposals is launching a satellite channel. The proposal is in the study phase, in which a committee has been formed to study the different aspects of the channel, and it will hold its first meeting soon.

How do you see the outcome of the Arab revolutions so far, especially with Islamic-based parties coming out as the winners in the parliamentary elections, which some in the West are apprehensive about what that might mean for democracy and human rights?

It is no surprise that the West, or at least some Western policymakers and observers, perceive with concern the victory of “Islamist” political parties in elections held so far in some Arab Spring countries. Indeed, what they tend to describe as political Islam has been perceived for a long time, and even used, as a scarecrow. But let’s face it, political parties referencing Islam in many Muslim countries have managed to offer an alternative to long-serving authoritarian ruling regimes, which were close allies of Western countries and which have failed to implement the principles of good and democratic governance.

Now, I think we should wait and see whether Islam-inspired political parties are serious about living up to their discourse on good governance and socioeconomic development. We should keep in mind that these parties have been democratically elected by the people, and as such, they have the legitimacy to govern. They will be judged for their policies and actions as well as for their ability to reform the style of governance against which the people have risen. We should not prejudge these parties just because we have some preconceived, distorted notions or understandings of the compatibility of Islam with democracy and human rights. We should also be careful about accepting as absolute what these parties might claim to be Islamic-based views and decisions.

What actions does the OIC take to preserve human rights in the Islamic world?

The OIC’s commitment to human rights is absolute. This emanates from the fundamental principles of the Islamic faith that has, at its core, the respect for human dignity and human life. The concept of human rights, as we know today, has evolved over the centuries out of the need for protection of fundamental freedoms of human beings, such as the basic right to life, food and shelter. It encompasses the broader concept of political, social, cultural and economic rights.

Because of this, the OIC started the establishment of an Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC), based on the mandate of the Ten-Year Program of Action and the new OIC charter adopted inDakar in 2008 during the 11th summit. The statute of the commission was adopted during the 38th Council of Foreign Ministers held in Astana in June 2011 and entered into force following its adoption. What was envisaged to be achieved over a period of 10 years was accomplished in half the stipulated time period, which is quite an achievement. The 38th Council of Foreign Ministers also elected 18 independent experts composing the commission. The experts held their first session inJakarta in February 2012, where they worked on developing a framework to strengthen human rights in the OIC member states.

How does the OIC view the violence against small Muslim minority sects and non-Muslim minorities in Muslim countries, and what is it doing in this regard?

The OIC has constantly championed a culture of religious coexistence as a way of creating a world where the values of justice, cooperation and mutual respect prevail. The OIC has embraced the idea of a constructive and mutually enriching dialogue among and within religions as a counterweight to the doom and gloom prophecy of a purported clash of civilizations. I launched years ago an initiative in that sense and conveyed the idea to Western leaders and at international forums.

The OIC has strongly condemned violence and intolerance of other religious faiths and minorities as well as the destruction of places of worship, a practice that runs counter to the fundamental tenets of Islam. We condemned the burning of churches in Java, Indonesia, and more recently we firmly condemned the bombing attacks led by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

As for small Muslim groups and non-Muslim minorities in Muslim countries, the OIC has never ceased calling for the imperative of guaranteeing and protecting the rights of all Muslim sects and non-Muslim minorities in Islamic countries in a spirit of tolerance and acceptance. We have insistently emphasized the need to focus on the shared values that bring together the adherents of the various denominations of Islam on the one hand as well as non-Muslims and Muslims on the other, as a way of fostering intra- and interfaith understanding and tolerance while promoting peace, harmony and stability. In this sense, we have always denounced any positions or acts that incite against or target non-Muslims or small sects in Muslim-majority nations.

We are in contact with the officials in those member states that have witnessed violent acts against their non-Muslim populations, and we are trying to help steer the society away from tension and toward harmony.

In a similar vein, the International Islamic Fiqh Academy, which is an OIC subsidiary organ, endeavors to boost collective ijtihad (the process of deriving rules on contemporary issues from the Qur’an and Sunnah) in the field of Islamic jurisprudence as a shield against the proliferation of reckless and irresponsible individual interpretations that may prove detrimental to the image of Islam and Muslims.

What are your efforts to combat Islamophobia and extremism?

Islamophobia is surely one of serious concern for the Muslim Ummah, and the OIC has been seized with the issue since the day I took over the organization. Islamophobia came as a priority on the agenda of the 3rd Extraordinary OIC Summit held in Makkah in 2005, which mandated the General Secretariat to establish an observatory in the Ten-Year Program of Action to monitor the issue and take necessary steps to counter it. The observatory was created to monitor and sensitize the world about Islamophobic incidents and, at the same time, create an awareness campaign against Islamophobia. The observatory already presented four annual reports, and it has monthly reports that are available on the OIC’s official website. The main issues are related to desecration of cemeteries, mosques, Islamic cultural centers, the stigmatization of Muslims searching for work, in the work itself, and in the public sphere. In its latest report released in June 2011, the observatory dwelt extensively on the rise of the extreme right in parts of Europe and the United Statesand its consequences for the integration of Muslims therein. Incidentally, the recent report by Amnesty International released last month confirms the findings of the observatory on the rise of Islamophobia in Europe.

As part of the OIC’s efforts to counter Islamophobia, we have taken initiatives to organize and actively participate in various conferences that have taken place in member states and other countries. Our objective was and is aimed at removing the misgivings and distortion of image as well as highlighting the positive side of Islam and to initiate a dialogue among civilizations on the basis of historical reconciliation. I would mention, for instance, the successful OIC-Georgetown University Symposium on “Pluralism and Islam” held in Washington, D.C. in September 2007, an occasion for interacting with prominent think tanks and academic institutions in Washington and New York and for one-on-one meetings with heads of delegation of European and Muslim countries. Later on, the proceedings of the meeting were published in a form of booklet titled “Islamophobia and the Challenges of Pluralism in the 21st Century.” Also, the OIC together with the Alliance of Civilizations, the Council of Europe and the British Council organized an open roundtable on “Addressing Islamophobia: Building on unused opportunities for mutual respect and inclusion” on the sidelines of the Alliance of Civilizations’ third global forum held in Rio de Janeiro in May 2010. The event aimed at holding an informed debate on how to address Islamophobia from a result-oriented perspective. Based on available data on discrimination and prejudice toward Muslim communities in various countries, it discussed how to concert efforts in order to bring citizens of various backgrounds together to build trust and social cohesion. All the speakers were unanimous that Islamophobia was a global phenomenon and a threat to peace and security for people of all religious and cultural backgrounds, and that it had to be addressed collectively.

I would also mention that the unanimous adoption of the OIC-initiated Resolution 16/18 by the UN Human Rights Council in April 2011 and the UN General Assembly Resolution A/66/167 in November 2011 on combating intolerance based on religion and belief are a landmark beginning for the future on building a climate of trust between the West and the Muslim world. Resolution 16/18 and the process of implementing it, known as the “Istanbul Process,” aims to develop a culture of peaceful cohabitation among people of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds without curtailing the freedom of expression, except when it comes to “incitement to eminent violence.”

SOURCE:SOMALIAND SUN

Mareeg.com- T he forces opposing immigrants and Islam in Europe go hand in hand: elections and the politics of division have served such forces well. In advancing their political agenda, the elites of the continent dislike Muslim immigrants, hate Halaal meat and remain fixated on Islamic fundamentalism. Extremists such as Anders Behring Breivik killed his own people because he felt that the Labour Party was too relaxed about  Muslim immigration into Norway. It became the reason that he massacred them on July 2011 in Utoya. Moreover, the spectacular success of the French far-right party, The National Front, in 2012 French presidential election demonstrate the alarming shift of Europe’s politics from traditional liberalism to more radical extremism, cultural intolerance and more importantly, accepting Muslim integration into the European mainstream.

Britain’s far-right, the British Freedom Party has a clearly adopted anti-Islamic policy which it manifests as its ideology. The same is true for the British National Party and Nick Griffin’s anti-Muslim views are well known. Thus, Amnesty International warned in its April report 2012 ‘Choice and Prejudice: discrimination against Muslims in Europe’, that the rise of extremist movements in Europe could lead further discriminatory policies targeting Muslims. So could these developments suggest a total rejection of a different faith? Or are they merely based (as some argue) on the beliefs that Muslim migrants in Europe were indirectly responsible for Europe’s economic crisis that led the harsh austerity measures adopted by the governments?

Whatever the case might be these developments negate the admiration of European culture in the hearts of Muslims. It was well known that Europeans have been preserving the culture of tolerance since the end of Second World War and therefore Europeans frequently argue that their past history of intolerance and prejudice has forced their societies to be more just and democratic. Such achievements attracted and helped the flourishing of multiculturalism in the continent. Mr. Christian Rampage the French counsel general in Karachi said while he was speaking at a Seminar on “Vision for a Common European Home” at the Area Study Center for Europe in theUniversity of Karachi; that the European Union is a product of gigantic human and intellectual endeavors which transformed a blood ridden continent into a land of peace and growth – promoting and ensuring the prosperity of multiculturalism.

However contrary to this claim, Ziauddin Sardar, a scholar and advocate for European Muslims says the open manifestation of racism is not an isolated phenomenon. Rather, it is deeply rooted in a colonial experience. He traveled across four European countries (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France) to assess the level of prejudice against Muslim minorities and his discovery was not only disturbing but also frightening. Sardar found that in Germany, massive Turkish immigrants were brought after the end of the war to build the war torn Germany but were not considered good enough to be granted German nationality. They have been kept outside of German identity as to preserve the continuation of racial purity. In Holland, he came to know that the Dutch see Muslims as a separate community because Holland has a brutal colonial history in the most populous Muslim nation on Earth – Indonesia. The Islamist insurgency in Aceh is a legacy of the people’s long war with the Dutch, a war the colonizer never won.

Similarly Belgium had the most vicious and inhumane colonial history in Congo and armed police would routinely invade villages, round up women and children, imprison them, and murder them until the required amount of rubber had been delivered by the men. Sardar argues that Europe’s colonial past is the main obstacle to Islam’s assimilation into Europe. His view is shared by Wolfram Richter, a professor of economics at the University of Dortmund, who emphasizes that all problems encountered by the Muslims in Europe are created by fear and loathing that is rooted in old-fashioned racism. He added that Europeans could not learn from their history and concluded, “the next holocaust would be against Muslims”.

France’s prohibition on the full-face veil is another attack on Muslim identity. Such motives constitute retrogressive attitudes and prove that the acceptability of multiculturalism is, at best, far-fetched in Europe. And of course, there were the Danish cartoons as well!

Equally, the policies of extreme hatred against Islam can be seen hard at work in the Netherlands where a far-right anti-Islam party, Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders is the third largest party in the Parliament. The party has been popular for years and won 9 nine seats in the 2006 election; this number rose to 24 in 2010 and the party had a bigger share of the vote than the Christian Democrats. Geert Wilders is an outspoken politician against Islam and called the Quran – the Holy Book of Islam as ‘Fascist Book’, he said Islam is not a religion but an ideology; the ideology of retarded culture. He said, “I have had enough of Islam in Netherlands, I don’t want one more Muslim immigrant. We have to stop the Tsunami of Islamization, it is effecting our hearts, our ideology, our culture”.  He went further by saying that I have read the Quran and studied the life of Mohamed, the messenger, and came to know that Islam is a totalitarian ideology that restricts individual freedom and liberty. He concluded that “more Islam in Europe means less life, less liberty and less happiness”.

With the disappearance of Communist ideology as a threat to western democracy, western policymakers have come to perceive Islam, particularly Islamic militants as an emerging threat to the values of democracy: this is confusing because Islam the religion and Jihadist movements are two wholly separate things. They assume Islam to be a menace to Western Civilization. Instead, Europe must look back to its historical experience of prejudice. It must discourage extremists by adopting mechanisms that inspire open dialogue between all parties.

Samuel Huntington infamously described the “fault lines” of today as “battle lines” of tomorrow. People such as Anders Behring Breivik have taken the clash of civilizations thesis a bit beyond its logical conclusion: or perhaps not?

For some Muslim immigrant families in France and other parts of Europe, the hope of a better future for their children in their adopted country is turned into a nightmare when they fall prey to the teachings of religious extremist groups, Colin Randall writes…
Staring at the flickering video clips of Mohamed Merah, the small-time criminal who chose to kill and be killed after reinventing himself as a jihadist warrior in the unlikely battleground of southwestern france, the mother of another young French Muslim sees striking similarities.

Merah and her son, she says as she studies the features, could almost have been brothers.

Sadly, the resemblance ran deeper than physical appearance. Her son is five years younger than Merah but shares his fervent desire “to die a martyr”.

Abdel (a pseudonym) is 18. He was one of a number of young men recruited for a branch of the Islamist network Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), based in the eastern suburbs of Nice. The group was broken up by police raids in the aftermath of Merah’s seven fatal shootings in Toulouse in March, though no direct link is suggested.

His mother, her own first name changed to Fatima, thinks back to when her son stopped being a shy teenager interested mostly in football and his PlayStation. She noticed his attempts, not very successful, to grow a beard and hoped it might be a sign he was developing a more masculine edge to his personality. When she realised other thoughts were on his mind, she was devastated.

“It was after Ramadan last summer,” she told Nice-Matin, a newspaper circulating on the glitzy, sunny Cote d’Azur, far from the grim Parisian banlieues where radicalism is generally considered more likely to breed.

“Overnight, he changed and became reproachful of me for not being a good Muslim. Suddenly, everything was sinful. He stopped his young brother going to the cafe on the seafront in Menton, saying it was non-believers, the impure, who were serving him.”

And then she found him packing kit for a “grand trip” to Afghanistan, intent with or without family approval to leave France for a “true Islamic land”.

Fatima is just one more Muslim parent in the West whose life has been turned into a nightmare by dramatic changes in an offspring’s demeanour, inspiring fears that a logical outcome may be violent death or a life wasted in jail. Her son was talking of joining about 30 other young Frenchmen of Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian origin to travel via Tunis to Libya. There, they would undergo combat training and “learn the true Islam, not that of imams corrupted by the West” before being “ready for Afghanistan”.

Others have followed a similar route, a phenomenon now under intense scrutiny by the French authorities in the wake of the horror caused by Merah’s series of shootings, and because of the apparent manner of his radicalisation in prison and on visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The stern response of the state runs parallel to the despair felt by Muslim parents struggling to bring up children in the hope they can break free from the trap of low-paid, dead-end employment or no employment at all.

Where they failed, as immigrants with few opportunities, they want their children, educated and raised in France, to succeed. And above all, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they want to prevent them falling under the influence of extremists capable of exploiting grievances fostered by routine discrimination in jobs and housing and the gnawing sense of alienation.In a pleasant, middle-class suburb of the city of Narbonne, not so far from the scenes of Merah’s killings of children, off-duty soldiers and a teacher, and his own death at the hands of a special police unit surrounding his Toulouse apartment, Aicha El Wafi yearns for contact with her younger son, Zacarias Moussaoui. He sits 8,000 kilometres away in a top-security US prison cell, serving life without prospect of parole as the only person convicted in relation to the attacks of September 11, 2001. And he professes to want nothing more to do with her.

It is a case complicated by the fact that Moussaoui was not even at liberty on the day hijacked planes were flown into the twin towers and the Pentagon, and crashed in a Pennsylvania field. He was in a US jail for breaches of immigration law. What role, if any, he played in plotting the events of September 11 remains unclear six years after his trial. He owes his predicament in large part to a rambling series of confessions – or, rather, boasts – about plans to carry out attacks on US soil. The jury concluded he knew something about the 9/11 plot and, by keeping quiet, contributed to the slaughter.

Mrs El Waifa, who arrived in France from Morocco as a teenage bride, opposes extremism to the extent that she has gone into French schools to lecture Muslim teenagers on the virtues of tolerance. She invited me into her spacious, neatly furnished bungalow last year, soon after the 10th anniversary of September 11 had reopened wounds for so many. Her natural ebullience frequently gave way to signs of a mother’s distress as she explained her fierce belief in her son’s innocence, a belief she has clung to even as he has proclaimed his guilt.

Just as she was sure her son’s exposure to prejudice when young hardened him as he approached adulthood, she wondered whether she also bore some blame. Family life had been turbulent. Had she failed in some way as a mother, making him more susceptible to the influence of Islamists he later met while studying in London?

“His last words to me were to go away and forget him, never to speak to a lawyer or journalist again,” she told me. “But I simply cannot see how any parents can turn their back on a child. I will not rest until I see him free, or repatriated to prison in France.”

These are the high-profile cases. There are others from around France and neighbouring countries. In Paris, the story is still told of the young woman with a bright law career who suddenly abandoned her job at the Palais de Justice on the banks of the Seine and departed for Cairo. She told her mother she intended to study, but also that her heroine was Muriel Degauque, the so-called “Belgian baker” who, after marrying a Moroccan with militant views, blew herself up in an attack on US troops in Iraq.

And how many British Muslim mothers have agonised over sons who ended up in Guantanamo Bay or UK prison cells?

These women’s experiences show how mothers can be dragged into the front line of the struggle between fundamentalism and authority. And the actions of their disenchanted, radicalised children can inspire still deeper suspicion in the countries where they have made their lives, and even have been born.

When events as terrible as the killings at a Jewish school in Toulouse occur, and blame is attached to one person or more purporting to act in the name of Islam, many people react in knee-jerk fashion. The pleadings of moderate community leaders, who argue with some force that the bulk of France’s five million to seven million Muslims wish only to live in peace, much as they crave greater respect for their religion and a good deal more social justice, are too often overlooked.

“Someone told me recently: ‘Go back to your own country’,” Amina, a student wearing a headscarf, told a French reporter while attending France’s biggest annual gathering of Muslims on the outskirts of Paris in April. “Yet my mother is a native of Le Mans. I’m French!”

Mathieu Guidère, professor of Islamic studies at Toulouse II-Mirail University, offers the reassuring thought that few French Muslims go as far as to follow the route taken by Merah and Moussaoui. Tougher laws made organised cells less likely than individual gestures, usually stopping short of active engagement. But even this translates as 10 or so going each year from one area, the Midi-Pyrénées, on “jihadist” journeys to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

“Some have grown up in fairly comfortable conditions in France,” Guidère told La Dépêche newspaper in Toulouse. “But the more gentrified they are, the better indoctrination works. It is more rewarding being in Afghanistan with a Kalashnikov than doing nothing in Toulouse on benefits.”

Down on the French Riviera, Fatima is grateful that the arrest of a Senegalese man suspected of heading the Forsane Alizza branch has disrupted her son’s planned odyssey in search of his “true” Islam. However, she fears he will see his mentor’s detention as a setback but remain determined to see his project through.

“In the state he’s in,” his mother says, “we will be unable to keep him here. He doesn’t stop telling us he wants to die a martyr. But it is those who have put him in this state of mind who are the true enemies of Islam.”

SOURCE:THE NATIONAL