London Muslims and non-Muslims: not a big difference

Foreign Policy and Gallup World Poll published a survey about Britishness and
attitudes towards the state among London Muslims and the British public in general.

It turns out that both share a lot of views and agree on most of the current issues about multiculturalism, integration and identity.
You can read and see the data here

The surprising results of the poll shows us that the supposed clash of cultures between Muslims and non-Muslims isn’t really that big and that it revolves around minor issues (if you can call the veil-issue a minor issue of course).
The violent, little minority of extremists (the right-wing BNP and self-exploding Muslims) are an exception

Beyond the Veil-poll

Multiculturalism debate

If you’re interested in the multiculturalism debate in Europe, I advise you to read the articles on Sign and Sight.
Columnist and renowned philosophers having sophisticated catfights on how to integrate Europe’s muslims (think Tariq Ramadan, Ian Buruma and Pascal Bruckner)
The internet-debate garnered a lot of attention in the European press.

You can read everything here
Enjoy!

Morocco to tighten its control on mosques

According to the news-site Magharebia the Moroccan government is tightening its control on the mosques in the country.

They introduced a new law that regulates the building and expansions of mosques. This to prevent extremism from gaining a foothold in the country’s places of worship.
Besides the mosques, the law will also regulate the zawiyas and other places of prayer.
The law regulates the cash-flow of the mosques and, very strange, also the architecture.

The islamist reli-mongers, also known as PJD, are criticizing the law because it would frighten the benefactors of the mosques. (DUH, you reli-mongers thats the whole point of the law. Benevolent benefactors wont be scared away and the extremist will hesitate)

I just wonder who the extremist are in the eyes of the government? Do they count Saudi wahhabis as extremist as well? Or are those people still welcome?
I certainly hope not. The law would be useless if we didn’t scare those Saudis away.

It is a risky step of the government, tightening its control of the mosques.
How will this translate to the streets , as another attack on the poor muslims?

God or Allah?

At Aqoul there is an interesting discussion going on for a while.
Something thats been bothering me for years.

The hot topic is; Why dont we translate Allah to God? Why do western media and western muslim keep on using the word Allah instead of God? God is a perfect substitute and translation for the word Allah.

This is something I totally agree with. I never mention the word Allah, except for discussions in (Moroccan)-Arabic. But besides those discussion its always God. This confuses some (non)-muslim westerners who honestly believe that God isn’t Allah and that Allah isn’t God.
They say God is christian and Allah is muslim. Besides the stupidity of an argument like that, its also incorrect.
Arab Christians worship Allah. I have an arabic Bible where the word Allah is regularly used.
And if God is supposedly Christian, why don’t we speak of Jahweh/JHWH if we’re talking about Judaism?

Anyhow, more reading at Aqoul. Some comments are really bitchy and funny.
The Guardian picked it up as well

UK Muslim police-officer and her hands

And we have another Muslim-controversy in the UK. Yeah!
This time it is a “non-asian muslim” female police officer who refused to shake hands with Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

The reason? She is a female muslim and he is a man. Sir Ian Blair attended the graduation of the muslim woman’s class.
Sir Blair got an early notice that he shouldnt shake hands with the police officer. This made him mad but he didn’t want to create a scene on the spot.

The police officer in question explained that she doesn’t shake hands with man during social events (the graduation) but that she will touch men during her work.
She attended physical contact classes and nothing went wrong.
She will arrest men and beat them up if necessary (muslim women can be brutal police officers as well you know. Because of something called feminism)

This is ofcourse another bad publicity stunt for the UK muslim community ( I still have to figure out if I’m part of that community)
It will emphasize the “strangeness” of this community in the eyes of the British underbellies.

Ofcourse, as an ultra-liberal, I’m all pro-”do what you want in your private life”.
And because of the fact that the police officer in question said that she will touch and handle men during work-time, there shouldn’t be any problem.
But that would be in a perfect world.
At the moment it is a problem because of the tensions between the different communities in the UK and between the police force and the muslim community.
So it is a problem. If you want it or not.

She should have shaken hands with her boss. Just for the sake of publicity and because of the existing tensions.
It is weird to ask somebody to change her values she enforces in her private life because of public tensions.
But anyhow, this is how it works now. We came to a point whereby a community has to adapt in strange ways to satisfy another community.

So shake hands with non-muslim guys and don’t shake hands with muslim guys, if you want to ofcourse.

Video: Islamic extremism inside the UK

Yesterday Channel 4 aired an interesting documentary about Islamic extremism/wahhabism in the UK.
It was very interesting and quite shocking. It was nothing new actually. We all know that wahhabism is everywhere.
But it is still interesting to see how it works and how they camouflage radical mosques as tolerant and open.
See the 6 videos after the jump