Tag: Islam

Islamists in Egypt and Turkey: a comparison

The Al Arabiya Institute for Studies compared Islamists in Egypt and Turkey. (File)

Al Arabiya Institute for Studies – Hoshnek Oussi

The Al Arabiya Institute for Studies examined 15 points of conversion and difference between Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood rule, and Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AK).

1. Turkey’s Islamists have long participated in political life, co-governing the country in the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, and ruling on their own since 2002. Egypt’s Brotherhood were in opposition since the establishment of the group, until the election of Mohamed Mursi as president last year.

2. Turkey’s Islamists, despite being oppressed, never committed violence against the state. This excludes the experience of the Turkish Hezbollah, an extremist organization established by the intelligence services in the early 1990s against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and dissolved at the end of the 1990s with it leaders’ imprisonment. After coming to power, the AK made some serious judiciary reforms, resulting in the release of thousands of Turkish Hezbollah detainees, whose party was divided in two, with one group following the AK, and the other operating undercover with its old name, as a Sunni party inspired by the Iranian experience of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Egypt’s Islamists used violence against the state, and against those who opposed them before and after they gained power.

3. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government entered into conflict with the army and the constitutional court six years after coming to power. Egypt’s Islamists started their governing days with an open war against the judiciary, army, military and society.

4. Turkey’s Islamists embedded their cadres and commanders in the army, police, security forces and judiciary, as a first step on the path to key positions. This represents long-term planning. However, to date there are no prominent Brotherhood loyalists among Egypt’s army or security forces.

5. Egypt’s Islamists possess a network of businesses and media, but do not compare with Turkish Islamists’ economic and media power.

6. Turkey’s Islamists are more flexible, liberal and pragmatic than Egypt’s.

7. Turkey’s Islamists have neo-Ottoman, nationalist and Islamist ambitions, as well as a regional and international network of allies based on economic and military ties with Israel, the United States, Russia, China and the European Union. Egypt’s Brotherhood seek the Islamization of the state at any cost.

8. The nationalist side of Turkey’s Islamists is very strong, and the highest interests of the state are a priority, to the point that the Islamists are ready to partner with seculars on the Kurdish, Armenian and Cypriot issues. Turkish Islamists are trying to revive the nationalistic roots of Turkmen descendants in Iraq and Syria, in the service of Turkey’s interests. This was manifested during a Syrian Turkmen conference in Istanbul in Dec. 2012, attended by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Ershad Hormozlu, an Iraqi Turkmen and a key advisor to Turkish President Abdullah Gul. Egyptian Islamists have an “us against them” approach, of believers versus disbelievers, and of rebels versus remnants of the ousted regime.

9. Erdogan’s government commits all types of abuses against freedom of expression, undermining and destroying the media, but in a lawful manner. Reporters Without Borders has described Turkey as “the world’s biggest prison for journalists.” Egypt’s Islamists resort to intimidation, threats, arson, destruction, and even assassination.

10. Turkey’s Islamists have infiltrated regional opposition groups, especially Sunni ones. It is more accurate to say that the Brotherhood in Syria and Iraq are associated with Turkey rather than Egypt, despite the fact that the Brotherhood in Egypt is supposed to be the global reference for Arab Brotherhood groups. Turkey’s Islamists succeeded in controlling the Syrian regime before the revolution, and control both the revolution and the Syrian opposition, even contributing to its Islamization. Egypt’s Islamists lack the experience and culture to manage a state. Turkey’s Islamists have earned a reputation for being balanced and moderate, in harmony with secularism and the civil state, compared with the stubbornness and rigidity of Egypt’s Islamists, who are fighting the state and society.

11. Turkey’s Islamists did not make adversity to Israel their first priority when they assumed power, until they cut ties with it. Egypt’s Islamists do not camouflage their intention to rethink Cairo’s international and regional relations, including the peace treaty with Israel, according to their ideology, not the national interest.

12. Turkey’s and Egypt’s Islamists share the idea of a hidden agenda, although they do not agree on the tools or methods to be used in order to impose this agenda, which aims at remodeling the state under their slogan “Islam is the solution.”

13. Despite numerous military coups (1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997), Turkish political Islam grew in a pseudo-democratic environment. Egyptian political Islam grew under a long history of a state under emergency law. This has nurtured the civic approach to solving issues among Turkey’s Islamists, instead of the harsh confrontation and street agitation adopted by Egypt’s Islamists since the revolution. Turkey’s Islamists could have brought millions to the streets when they were threatened by seculars through a lawsuit at the constitutional court against the AK, but they refrained from doing so to avoid a state crisis, favoring the national interest over party ideology.

14. Turkey’s Islamists did not assume power by revolution, and did not betray their allies. The Brotherhood did not adhere to Egypt’s revolution in its early days, then stole the show, broke its promises, betrayed its revolutionary comrades, and assumed power unilaterally by force and trickery. Turkey’s Islamists ruled unilaterally through their economic development projects.

15. Turkey does not have an “office of the high adviser,” which in Egypt controls the president and prime minister.

Prepared by Hoshnek Oussi for the Al Arabiya Institute for Studies

May 9, 2013
US scholars scrutinise Islamic adoption ban

İslam’da Evlat Edinme Yasak mı?

US scholars scrutinise Islamic adoption ban

Sharmila Devi

NEW YORK // The widely held belief that adoption is banned under Islamic law is being examined by Islamic scholars and child welfare advocates in the United States in a process that may lead to more American Muslim families being able to care for orphans.

Topic United States

A study of the issue is expected early next year from the Shura Council of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (Wise). The initiative is sponsored by the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a group founded by Daisy Khan and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who plans to open an Islamic centre near the New York site of the World Trade Center.

The report was expected to examine Islamic law and kafalah, a kind of guardianship or “unlimited entrustment” resembling foster care that does not cut the ties between orphans and their biological families in the way that western-style adoption does. The Prophet Mohammed was an orphan himself and was cared for by extended family. The Quran says a child’s biological family must never be hidden.

“The report will look to combine compassion and justice and what it means to work in the best interest of the child,” said a spokeswoman for Wise. “It will put the emphasis on intention and some Muslim families may find arguments in it that would ease their hearts.”

The decision to consult Wise’s Shura Council to find out why American Muslim families are reluctant to adopt was made by Helene Lauffer, associate executive director of Spence-Chapin, a US agency that has offered adoption services since 1908.

“We’re always looking to where else we can develop a programme,” she said. “We saw there was a huge swathe of the world where there was a tremendous need. There are tens of thousands of children growing up without permanent families in institutions or on the streets and many are in Muslim-majority countries. We began to think about the barriers to adoption, about guardianship and about how Muslim families living in the US interpret the tenets of their faith.”

About six months ago, she met Ms Khan, who agreed to examine the issue. Wise’s Shura Council is made up of 26 Islamic scholars and experts based in 13 countries including Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and the United States. It has previously examined issues such as domestic violence, female genital cutting and honour crimes.

Inter-country adoptions are considered a last resort after the chances of placing an orphan with extended family are exhausted. Meanwhile, there are a growing number of US Muslim families who would like to care for a child, particularly those from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The number of orphans worldwide has been estimated at 143 million, said Ms Lauffer. But inter-country adoptions peaked at 40,000 in 2004 and 22,000 of those children were adopted by US families. The number has since declined, according to the US National Council for Adoption, a non-profit group.

Chuck Johnson, the chief executive of the council, said he welcomed any initiative that would comply with the Islamic injunction to help orphans. “We already have open adoption in America where children maintain links with their families and Muslim countries could set their own rules as to how that might work,” he said.

“I’m very excited to see a dialogue beginning and it’s incumbent upon child welfare advocates to continue that dialogue.”

Inter-country adoptions are governed by the Hague Convention on Adoption, which works to ensure that the adoptions are in the best interests of children. Countries are free to set their own conditions, such as any religious requirements.

The UAE is not a signatory to the convention. The website of the US State Department said it did not maintain files on the adoption process in the UAE because adoptions were so rare, saying there were fewer than five adoptions by American citizen parents in the past five years.

via US scholars scrutinise Islamic adoption ban – The National.

March 31, 2013
Aubrey Rose: Discovering Huntington’s Fallacy in Turkey

As a Christian American studying international law half way across the world in Turkey, I’m constantly confronted with the question of Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.”

Huntington told us that people’s cultural and religious identities are the primary source of conflict in our era. On a macro level, it is about an inevitable clash between Western and Islamic civilization. On a micro level, it is about an inevitable clash between Christian-Americans and Muslims. My challenge to this theory is: come follow me around Istanbul for a day.

Huntington took a black marker and drew a harsh line between civilizations, linking Western identity to progressive values and Islamic identity to traditional values. Huntington said Turkey was living on a “fault line” because it has been torn between Islamic roots and “Westernization” since the 1920s. In the future, he said, Turkey must take a side and pick one of the civilizations it bridges together.

However, recent developments in Turkey have demonstrated that this division is a simplistic way to view the world. While Huntington’s theory gives the West a monopoly on progressive values, Turkey is more than 90 percent Muslim and has made more strides on human rights issues in the past 10 years than the United States. This includes, most notably, abolishing the death penalty and improving prison conditions. While Turkey still has a long way to go to satisfy international human rights law standards, it is Turkish Muslim advocates, not Westerners, who are demanding more progressive laws to reflect their own values. With Prime Minister Erdoğan recently declaring that Turkey could pave its own path without European Union membership, it looks like Turkey doesn’t wish to pick a side in the civilization clash.

One inspiring advocate fighting for Turkey’s progressive legacy is my International Human Rights Law professor. When I first heard my professor voice the all-consuming conviction she felt as an attorney at the European Court of Human Rights, I recognized myself in her. Sitting in that Turkish classroom, I was reminded of the burning feeling I got when I first learned about America’s serious human rights violations and my peers didn’t seem to care.

Catholicism and Islam both honor the value of human dignity, refusing to treat any human as a means to an end. Just as my passion for legal advocacy cannot be detached from my Jesuit Catholic upbringing, my professor’s passion is closely intertwined with Islam. Our interactions remind me of the greatest gift of interfaith dialogue: solidarity. When dealing with issues as morbid as execution and torture, the divider between complacency and conviction is the most important fault line for Christian and Muslim advocates alike.

When President Obama spoke to the Turkish parliament in 2009, newspapers read “Obama Declares An End to Clash of Civilizations.” In this era, a nation like Turkey doesn’t have to abandon Islam to progress as a democracy and realize human rights for its citizens. In the same way, a Catholic pre-law student does not have to suppress her religion to feel a sense of comradery with a Muslim lawyer fighting for human dignity.

Turkey and my experiences here re-affirm my hope that the differences between our religious identities will not overshadow the common convictions that bring us together.

Aubrey Rose is a prelaw and international relations student at American University. Right now, she is studying abroad in Istanbul, Turkey. In high school, she founded a local interfaith student organization with a Muslim friend in their hometown of Frederick, Maryland. Through conferences and leadership training, Interfaith Youth Core helped Aubrey promote cooperation between her Catholic church and a local mosque. Raised in a family with strong Catholic social justice values, Aubrey hopes to pursue law school and work for non-profits that promote criminal justice reform and an end to the death penalty.

via Aubrey Rose: Discovering Huntington’s Fallacy in Turkey.

March 12, 2013
Violence In Afghanistan Has No Religious Justification Say Muslim Clerics At A Conference in Istanbul

What the Mullahs Are Mulling

By ANDREW FINKEL

ISTANBUL — Midday in Istanbul’s historical Beyazit district and the air suddenly fills with the call to prayer from the many royal mosques nearby. It is a reminder that a part of the city that now bustles with shoppers, university students and tourists was once the heart of a great Islamic empire.

Istanbul is no longer home to the caliphate, but it still transmits to the faithful: At the beginning of the week, leading Muslim scholars from across the world — Indonesia, Britain, Pakistan — met in a modestly sized hotel conference room to hammer out the rights and wrongs of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Although I was told not to identify participants without their permission for fear of reprisals by the Taliban, no one seemed afraid to call a spade a spade. Much effort was spent debunking the notion that the struggle in Afghanistan is a holy war rather than a straightforward tussle for power.

The conference, “Islamic Cooperation for a Peaceful Future in Afghanistan,” was the brainchild not of a cleric but of Neamatollah Nojumi, a professor of conflict resolution at George Mason University who came to the subject the hard way. At the age of 14 he was a mujahid fighting the Soviets in his native Afghanistan.

Simply by gathering people of good will in one room, the organizers believe they have succeeded where national authorities have failed.

Now his mission is to stop Afghans from fighting Afghans. The method is straightforward. Senior Afghan clerics meet with the world’s leading Islamic theologians to discuss suicide bombings, the targeting of civilians, the destruction of historical artifacts — even domestic violence.

This week’s conference culminated in a detailed and strongly worded resolution that reaffirmed Islam’s compatibility with universal human norms and called on religious institutions in Afghanistan, Pakistan and neighboring countries to end violence. The document will be circulated to more than 160,000 mosques in Afghanistan so that its findings may trickle into individual consciences there.

The meeting was the third of its kind, and the overall effort has started to make a difference, according Ataur Rahman Salim, director of the Scientific Islamic Research Center in Kabul. It is now easier to oppose the men of violence. “The majority of Islamic scholars are not afraid to speak out,” he said.

But “some are sitting on the fence,” he added. Indeed. Several speakers supported the Taliban over the Afghan government and were more critical of NATO bombings than of suicide attacks by insurgents.

I sat next to the Indian scholar Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, who is closely associated with the ultra-orthodox Deoband community. He believes that NATO, not Pakistan, is complicating the situation in Afghanistan and that government is supported by a mere 10 percent of the population. And yet he parts company with the Taliban when it comes to the use of violence. “Conflict will not solve conflict,” he told me. “Islam does not mean war.”

Nor does Islam mean denying women access to education and health services, according to the draft of the final resolution. The document also states that the violation of women’s rights contradicts the tenets of Islam.

Participants did not expect this process to solve Afghanistan’s main problem — “government without governance,” according to Nojumi — but it does allow a burgeoning civil society movement to call both the Afghan government and insurgents to account and to put pressure on interfering neighbors to back off.

ANDREW FINKEL

Simply by gathering people of good will in one room, the organizers believe they have succeeded where national authorities have failed. Whereas four clerics from Pakistan attended this conference, the Afghan and Pakistani governments have tried and have not managed to organize a meeting of clerics since the beginning of the year.

Given the diversity of participants, the degree of unanimity was remarkable. The recourse to violence in Afghanistan had no religious justification, speaker after speaker said. Or, in the words of the final declaration, “A crime committed in the name of Islam is a crime against Islam.”

Andrew Finkel has been a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, as well as a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers. He is the author of the book “Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

via Violence In Afghanistan Has No Religious Justification Say Muslim Clerics At A Conference in Istanbul – NYTimes.com.

March 7, 2013
Saudi Arabia to raze Prophet Mohammed’s tomb to build larger mosque

Courtyard of the Prophet Mohammed Mosque in the Saudi holy city of Medina (AFP Photo / Mahmud Hams)

The key Islamic heritage site, including Prophet Mohammed’s shrine,is to be bulldozed, as Saudi Arabia plans a $ 6 billion expansion of Medina’s holy Masjid an-Nabawi Mosque. However, Muslims remain silent on the possible destruction.

Work on the Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, is planned to start as soon as the annual Hajj pilgrimage comes to a close at the end of November.

After the reconstruction, the mosque is expected to become the world’s largest building, with a capacity for 1.6 million people.

And while the need to expand does exist as more pilgrims are flocking to holy sites every year, nothing has been said on how the project will affect the surroundings of the mosque, also historic sites.

Concerns are growing that the expansion of Masjid an-Nabawi will come at the price of three of the world’s oldest mosques nearby, which hold the tombs of Prophet Mohammed and two of his closest companions, Abu Bakr and Umar. The expansion project which will cost 25 billion SAR (more than US $6 billion) reportedly requires razing holy sites, as old as the seventh century.

The Saudis insist that colossal expansion of both Mecca and Medina is essential to make a way for the growing numbers of pilgrims. Both Mecca and Medina host 12 million visiting pilgrims each year and this number is expected to increase to 17 million by 2025.

Authorities and hotel developers are working hard to keep pace, however, the expansions have cost the oldest cities their historical surroundings as sky scrapers, luxury hotels and shopping malls are being erected amongst Islamic heritage.

A room in a hotel or apartment in a historic area may cost up to $ 500 per night. And that’s all in or near Mecca, a place where the Prophet Mohammed insisted all Muslims would be equal.

“They just want to make a lot of money from the super-rich elite pilgrims, but for the poor pilgrims it is getting very expensive and they cannot afford it,” Dr. Irfan Al Alawi of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, told RT.

Jabal Omar complex – a 40 tower ensemble – is being depicted as a new pearl of Mecca. When complete, it will consist of six five star hotels, seven 39 storey residential towers offering 520 restaurants, 4, 360 commercial and retail shops.

But to build this tourist attraction the Saudi authorities destroyed the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress and the hill it stood on.

The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimated that 95 percent of sacred sites and shrines in the two cities have been destroyed in the past twenty years.
The Prophet’s birthplace was turned into a library and the house of his first wife, Khadijah, was replaced with a public toilet block.

Also the expansion and development might threaten many locals homes, but so far most Muslims have remained silent on the issue.

“Mecca is a holy sanctuary as stated in the Quran it is no ordinary city. The Muslims remain silent against the Saudi Wahhabi destruction because they fear they will not be allowed to visit the Kingdom again,” said Dr. Al Alawi.

The fact that there is no reaction on possible destruction has raised talks about hypocrisy because Muslims are turning a blind eye to that their faith people are going to ruin sacred sites.

“Some of the Sunni channels based in the United Kingdom are influenced by Saudi petro dollars and dare not to speak against the destruction, but yet are one of the first to condemn the movie made by non Muslims,” Dr. Al Alawi said.

rt.com, 31 Oct 2012

October 31, 2012
First of four centres to train Islamic scholars opens

The first of four centres for Islamic theology was officially opened last week at the University of Tübingen in southern Germany. All four will begin teaching later this year.

At Tübingen, the first 36 students have already enrolled for a bachelor degree in Islamic theology, starting next winter.

Like two others, one split between Münster and Osnabrück and the other between Frankfurt and Giessen, which are to be officially opened later this year, the Tübingen centre started its academic activities last October. A fourth, located at Erlangen and Nuremberg, will officially start in the winter semester of 2012-13.

The federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will be providing a total of around EUR20 million (US$26 million) to support the scheme.

The federal government decided four years ago to set up new centres for Islamic theology. A government commission reviewing the issue maintained that given the more than four million Muslims in Germany, such centres were urgently needed.

Up to 2,000 teachers are required for a total of 700,000 schoolchildren over the next few years. The new centres will train teachers for Islamic religious education, junior scholars of Islamic theology and religious scholars, also for mosques, as imams.

The BMBF is initially providing around EUR4 million for the Tübingen centre to fund university chairs, assistant staff and groups of junior scholars.

According to Tübingen’s rector, Bernd Engeler, the chief aim of the centre is to provide scholars with a broad-based education so that they can represent religious studies as an academic subject. Engeler regards training teachers who will eventually be teaching religion at higher secondary schools, or academics going on to careers in the media or various social service areas, as far more important than concentrating on imams.

“We wish to contribute the wealth of experience that we have gathered in theology at German universities to the development of Islamic theology,” Federal Education Minister Annette Schavan said at the opening ceremony in Tübingen on 16 January.

“I am sure that this is a milestone for integration, too.” The minister added that the centre offered a “great opportunity to promote dialogue with the Christian religions”.

The centre has been in operation for the past few months, pending its official inauguration by the minister.

Koranic scholar Omar Hamdan is the first professor appointed at Tübingen. Hamdan graduated in Islamic and Arabic studies in Jerusalem as well as comparative religion in Tübingen.

Leijla Demiri, from Macedonia, is to hold the chair of Islamic dogmatics from the winter semester of 2012-13. Demiri studied Islamic theology in Istanbul and Catholic theology in Rome, and subsequently did a PhD in comparative theology at the University of Cambridge.

Two junior professors are to teach Islamic law and the history and contemporary culture of Islam.

A seven-member Muslim advisory council is to support the process of institutionalising Islamic theology. The academic skills of the professors are tested solely by the University of Tübingen. The students comprise 23 women and 13 men, and come from all over the world.

via First of four centres to train Islamic scholars opens – University World News.

January 23, 2012