"Sarcasm intended" (wipes sweat off brow) - thank... God.
I completely agree - absolutely irrational, illogical masked, bigoted hatred.
My friend and I discussed this recently - I respect his opinion that Western ideals should be upheld and accept the figures that suggest a steep
increase in muslims in the Western world - however, I completely disagree with the proposed solutions/conclusions.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Some articles I used to inform myself (I was aware it was a topic up for debate but not well informed):
-
en.wikipedia.org...
-
en.wikipedia.org...
-
www.abc.net.au... (why mulitculturalism failed in Europe but succeeded in Australia)
- Below is an article on America's fear of Muslims with great investigative research.
- Also below is an explanation on why Swedish rape statistics may have peaked - with no mention of the rise in Muslims within the population.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Fear of a Muslim America
Cathy Young. Reason. Los Angeles:Aug/Sep 2011. Vol. 43, Iss. 4, p. 20-26 (7 pp.)
Abstract (Summary)
[...] some of Park ?i's leading opponents, including Geller and Gingrich, explicitly advocated a government ban. [...] there are many Muslims who
have condemned and stood up against terrorism, including those who recent?y volunteered to serve as human shields for Christian churches in Egypt
after church bombings by Islamist fanatics.There are Muslim scholars who are advocating a revision of Islamic orthodoxy on issues ranging from
women's rights to blasphemy and apostasy, and who are challenging the age-old clerical doctrine that the Koran's earlier, more peaceful and tolerant
verses are nullified by the later, more militant ones.
Full Text
(3905 words)
Copyright Reason Magazine Aug/Sep 2011
[Headnote]
In the fight against radical Islam, conservatives are trying to limit the property and speech rights of peaceful American Muslims.
IN MARCH, almost 10 years after the attacks of September n, 2001, America's uneasy, contradictory relationship with Islam was on full display at two
congressional hearings. The first, a House Committee on Homeland Security meeting chaired by Rep. Peter King (R-N. Y.), tackled "radicalization"
among American Muslims. Three weeks later, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IIl.) presided over a Senate Judiciary Committee panel that heard
testimony about anti-Muslim prejudice. Conservatives trumpet the Muslim peril, while liberals warn of Islamophobia.
Islamic extremism is indeed a serious global problem today, to a degree unmatched by the radical fringes of other major religions. While violent
fundamentalism is far less of a problem in the United States than in many other parts of the world, radicalism within the American Muslim community is
not entirely an invention of the lslamophobic right. The 2009 Fort Hood shooting by U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan is an extreme but real example
of what some Americans are willing to do. And a 2007 Pew poll found that 27 percent of American Muslim men under 30 believe suicide terrorism in
defense of Islam is at least sometimes justified.
But bias against American Muslims isn't a P.C. myth. Once confined mainly to a few rightwing blogs, anti-Islamic bigotry has become a visible
presence in Republican politics and the respectable conservative media. All around the country, right-of-center activists and politicians are trying
to use government force to limit the property rights of Muslims and repel the alleged menace of Shariah law. Islamophobia has crossed the line from
fringe rhetorical hysteria to active discrimination against U.S. citizens of the Islamic faith.
Blocking Mosques
For several years after 9/11, anti-Muslim rhetoric remained fairly rare. This can be credited in no small part to thenPresident George W. Bush, who
repeatedly stressed that we were not at war with Muslims, that Islam was a peaceful religion hijacked by violent extremists. The idea that Islam
itself was evil and that virtually all Muslims were potential enemies flourished mostly on "anti-jihadist" blogs, and some conservative pundits such
as Michelle Malkin occasionally peddled Muslims-under-the-bed paranoia. But these remained the exceptions.
When Barack Obama became president, that changed. Bush no longer held authority as a conservative leader, and the persistent rumors that Obama is a
secret Muslim gave added traction to a more overt anti-Islamic hostility. The turning point came during the furor over the "Ground Zero Mosque."
That controversy was slow to start. When plans for Park 51, an Islamic center and mosque near the World Trade Center site, were initially announced in
December 2009, there was hardly any negative reaction from the right. "I like what you're doing," the conservative pundit Laura Ingraham told Park
51 project organizer Daisy Khan on Fox News.
But a few months later, the far-right blogger/activist Pamela Geller launched a "Stop the 911 Mosque" campaign that was soon introduced to larger
audiences by the likes of Fox News host Sean Hannity and New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser. By the summer of 2010, opposition to the Islamic
center project became the conservative party line, and majorities of both Americans and New Yorkers agreed that the center shouldn't be built.
The symbolism of sites associated with tragic memories can be a highly sensitive issue. In the late 1980s, many Jewish groups objected when a group of
Carmelite nuns set up a convent on the edge of the Auschwitz grounds to pray for the dead. Their critics viewed the convent as an affront to the
memory of the Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy. It is not difficult to see why a large Islamic structure near a place where fanatics claiming to fight
for Islam murdered nearly 3,000 people would stir emotions.
But there is also no question that the antimosque campaign was rife with vitriol toward all of Islam. Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and other pundits
equated the project with a Ku Klux Klan memorial at Gettysburg, a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor, or a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust
Museum, each analogy equating mainstream Muslims with murderous aggressors. Rallies against Park ?? featured signs declaring that "Islam Kills" and
"Islam Is Terrorism," occasionally spelling Islam with a double s scripted like the Nazi SS logo.
Mohammed Al-Darsani, a second-generation immigrant, son of an imam, Florida International University law student, and U.S. Army veteran who considers
himself a member of the political right, believes opposition to Park 51 became "an overt assault on Islam." Al-Darsani admits this hostility is
largely a response to the real threat posed by Islamist extremism. Still, he says, "what unnerves me most is that detractors of the center seem to
assume that American Muslims are not as American as non-Muslims and have somehow been less affected by the terrorist attacks."
During the mosque debate, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer asserted that "no one disputes the right to build" it, only "the decency of
doing so" in that location. In fact, some of Park ?i's leading opponents, including Geller and Gingrich, explicitly advocated a government ban. Carl
Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor, wanted the government to stop the project; so did Rick Lazio, his chief rival for the GOP nomination.
What's more, around the same time, mosque blocking spread across the country, thousands of miles away from Ground Zero.
In Temecula, California, the mosque-fighting Baptist pastor Bill Rench bluntly stated that "we really don't want to see their influence spread."
Tea Party activist Diana Seraf?n berated local authorities for worrying too much about religious freedom: "I know it's there in the Constitution and
everything, but everything I read says Islam is a political movement."
In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the backlash against a mosque-to-be included vandalism as well as legal efforts to stop the project. The opposition was
backed by Republican politicians: Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, then a gubernatorial candidate, questioned "whether being a Muslim is actually a religion,"
while congressional candidate Lou Ann Zelenik campaigned on a firm stance against the "Muslim extremists." One Zelenik press release stated that
"until the American Muslim community find it in their hearts to separate themselves from their evil, radical counterparts...we are not obligated to
open our society to any of them." (Ramsey and Zelenik both lost in the Republican primaries in November 2010.)
Some opposition to mosques surely stems from concerns about traffic and other land-use issues. But the activists' denial of anti-Muslim animus is
often belied by their own words. In New Jersey, Bridgewater Township recendy moved to ban houses of worship from residential neighborhoods after a
Muslim group announced plans to convert a vacant inn into a mosque and community center. (The ordinance is now being challenged in court.) Local Tea
Party leader James Lefkowitz, who supports the ban, told the New Jersey Jewish News his objections were entirely about neighborhood impact: "The fact
that the center would contain a Muslim, rather than Christian or Jewish, house of worship doesn't trouble me at all." Yet in the very same
interview, Lefkowitz also stated that "certainly a Muslim mosque raises questions about where the money is coming from and the principals involved
and any association with terrorism." Ironically, it was Republicans who, io years ago, spearheaded a federal law prohibiting local governments from
using zoning laws to impose an "undue burden," especially in a targeted, discriminatory sense, on the exercise of religion.
Fighting Shariah
The last year also has seen an explosion of bills to ban the use of Islamic religious law in state courts. In November a ballot initiative prohibiting
courts from considering Shariah law or international law passed in Oklahoma. (The law has been stayed by a federal injunction pending a court
challenge.) The Missouri House of Representatives approved a similar measure in April. Anti-Shariah bills ? sometimes specifically singling out
Islamic law, sometimes referring more broadly to international, foreign, or religious law? are pending in about a dozen other states.
The push for Shariah bans is puzzling, to say the least. Since Muslims make up about ? percent of the U.S. population, and government establishment of
religion is prohibited by the Constitution, a Shariah takeover in America is about as likely as a zombie apocalypse. Yet to proponents, this is a
threat that must be stopped while there's still time. A closer look at the purported evidence for "creeping Shariah," however, shows a lot of
skewed and garbled facts? and issues by no means unique to Muslims or Islam.
The most notorious example in the anti-Shariah brief was a 2010 New Jersey case in which a judge seemed to say that an American Muslim could rape his
wife with impunity because his religion allowed it. The 18-year-old plaintiff, who had come to the U.S. from Morocco with her husband shortly after
their arranged marriage, was seeking a permanent restraining order while filing for divorce. She testified that her husband had repeatedly assaulted
her? claims corroborated by police photos of multiple bruises on her body? and forced her to have sex against her will. Family Court Judge Joseph
Charles made a finding of domestic violence but denied the restraining order, dismissing the abuse as a "bad patch" in the marriage. As for the
forced sex, the judge reasoned that, since the husband believed he was within his rights to demand sex from his wife, he lacked the intent to commit
criminal sexual assault.
Outrageous? Yes. Shariah in action? Not exacdy. Excusing illegal acts because they are sanctioned by a defendant's culture or religion is a very bad
idea for many reasons. It subverts equal justice, hinders the integration of immigrants, and perpetuates oppressive customs that many hope to escape.
But the "cultural defense" in U.S. law goes back more than 20 years, and most controversies related to it have not involved Muslims. In 1989 a
Chinese immigrant in New York City received five years' probation for bludgeoning his unfaithful wife to death; the defense argued that he had been
provoked by the extreme shame attached to cuckoldry in Chinese culture. The decision angered many people, especially advocates for battered women. But
no one tried to depict it as a warning sign of the yellow peril.
Another minor cause c?l?bre in 2010 was the summer arrest of four Christian evangelists at the annual Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan, for
disturbing the peace, a story that spread through Christian and conservative blogs. The missionaries, it was reported, had committed no offense but
speaking of their faith and handing out Christian literature, and were arrested in deference to the Shariah ban on preaching religions other than
Islam. Republican politicians such as Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Nevada senatorial candidate Sharron Angle sounded the
alarm about Shariah law coming to Dearborn, which has a large Muslim population.
The real story was far more complicated. The evangelists, members of a ministry called Acts 17 Apologetics, were arrested based on a complaint from a
Christian festival volunteer who claimed they had verbally harassed him and blocked his path. Two days later, they returned to hand out gospel
booklets in the street outside the festival? mainly, as their own video of the incident makes clear, to test whether they would be stopped.They were
approached by police, taken to a security booth, and advised that festival rules prohibited any handouts in that location.
The Dearborn Four were later acquitted on the breach of peace charge, and video footage strongly suggests the initial harassment complaint was trumped
up. (Whatever verbal aggression occurred in the encounter came primarily from the volunteer himself.) The complaint may have arisen from a vendetta
against a group that festival staffers saw as obnoxious troublemakers. An Acts 17 video from 2009, Sharia in America, shows three members of the group
goading a man at an Arab festival booth in a debate on Islam and terrorism, ignoring his requests to stop filming him, and then getting into a spat
with security.
But were the evangelists targeted for preaching the word of Christ to Muslims? The Baptist Press columnist Kelly Boggs, one of the commentators who
made this charge, retracted it a week later after learning some additional facts? in particular, that several Christian ministries had booths at the
festival where they freely interacted with visitors and gave out DVDs, pamphlets, and books, including the Gospels in Arabic. Acts 17 leader Nabeel
Qureshi has acknowledged in an interview that "not all Christians ran into trouble," only "those who were vocal" and who would not obey rules
restricting the distribution of literature to certain locations. So much for the dramatic assertion in one of the group's videos that "this is life
in Dearborn if you're a Christian."
Qureshi and his friends have attracted little sympathy from the local Christian community. A 2009 letter co-signed by several ministers? not
"Kumbaya"-singing liberal Christians but conservative evangelicals who stressed their own critical view of Islam? accused them of spreading blatant
falsehoods about the situation in Dearborn, saying their aggressive conduct at the festival "brought shame to the name of Christ."
Annoying though their antics may be, the Dearborn Four still have First Amendment rights that were very likely violated. But the real issue here is
the practice of restricting freedom of speech at conventions, festivals, and other public events to designated "free speech zones." It is not about
"Shariah law" any more than the 2007 arrest of two Jews for Jesus members for handing out leaflets outside an Israel Day festival in Los Angeles was
about covert rabbinical rule.
Culture Clash
Shariah panic aside, there are real cultural conflicts involving the practice of Islamic beliefs in the United States. At the extreme, these tensions
can escalate into severe and even deadly violence toward women who transgress traditional norms of behavior. Far more commonly, disputes have arisen
over such minor yet momentarily divisive issues as cab drivers turning down passengers who are carrying alcoholic beverages or accompanied by service
dogs. (In many such cases, the "Muslim" position is a fringe one within Islam. While Muslims are forbidden to drink alcohol and strongly discouraged
from keeping dogs as house pets, most Islamic authorities agree there is no prohibition on transporting either.)
So far the official responses to these disputes show no signs of a rush to either appeasement or persecution. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, the only
metropolitan area where taxi drivers' denial of service to liquor-carrying passengers at the airport is a significant issue, the city responded with
stiff penalties? a 30-day license suspension on die first offense, a two-year revocation on the second? for refusing a passenger for "unwarranted
reasons."
In other instances, furor over Islamization has been set off by trivial and harmless measures that infringe on no one's rights, such the installation
on a few college campuses of foot baths for Muslim students to use for ritual ablutions. Such provisions are no different in principle from
accommodations that benefit other religious groups, such as kosher menus in student dining halls.
Indeed, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment specialist, points out that many current disputes about public accommodation of Islamic
beliefs and practices, or enforcement of private contracts and arbitrations based on Islamic law, are not particularly novel. "They're not some
special new monkey wrench that Muslims are throwing into our legal system," he wrote on his Volokh Conspiracy blog on March 2c. "Christians, Jews,
and others have routinely raised such issues before, and continue to do so today." In most such cases? for instance, when Catholic social service
agencies ask to be exempted from state laws that prohibit discriminating against same-sex couples in adoption placements? conservatives are found on
the side of more religious accommodation.
Such accommodations, large and small, are very much a part of American life. While single-sex hours at a few municipal swimming pools for the benefit
of Muslims who observe traditional rules of modesty have raised hackles, similar provisions have been made for Orthodox Jews. In many areas with large
Jewish communities, push-buttoncontrolled traffic lights at crosswalks switch to automatic control on the Sabbath, when the Orthodox are not allowed
to operate electrical devices.
Nor is there anything new about conflicts and controversies over religion and state. In upstate New York in the 1980s, parents in an Orthodox Jewish
enclave sued the public school board because of their objections to female drivers on school buses carrying boys; when the suit was rejected, they
created their own school district, which was green-fit by the state legislature but later blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court as overtly religious in
nature. In some religious communities that expect all interpersonal disputes to be handled by spiritual elders? Jehovah's Witnesses, ultraOrthodox
Jews, the Amish? there have been serious concerns about cover-ups of criminal acts such as child sexual abuse, because of traditional pressure to not
report such crimes to the secular authorities.
How do critics of "Islamization" deal with these parallels? Last December, a Jewish reader on the website of Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes
pointed out that much-reviled proposals to allow Muslims to voluntarily settle domestic relations cases and financial disputes in Shariah courts are
analogous to existing Jewish religious courts or within-community conflict resolutions among Mormons or the Amish. Pipes responded: "Jews and Amish
do not try to take over the United States; Islamists do." Thus, all Muslims who ask for modest and standard accommodations for their religious values
are equated with "Islamists" who seek to take over America, and any concessions to such requests are seen as "the camel's nose under the tent"?
the first step to public floggings, stonings, and beheadings.
Any accommodation of faith-based beliefs that violates fundamental liberties and individual rights should be firmly rejected, whether it's the
acceptance of religiously sanctioned wife beating or the recent suggestion by Washburn University law professor Liaqat Ah Khan that "desecrations of
die Qur'an" should be outlawed because "given the presence of a growing population of American Muslims, Qur'an burning threatens domestic peace."
But the anti-Islamic backlash threatens essential rights too. Efforts to block die construction of mosques using government muscle are the most
obvious example. The recent Shariah bans could prevent American courts from honoring and enforcing private contracts and agreements based on Islamic
religious law, and perhaps even from recognizing the validity of marriages performed by Islamic courts abroad.
The Myth of the Muslim Monolith
The hard-to-swallow truth is that anti-Islam polemicists have a point: Islam is not quite the same as any other major religion. There is no country in
die world right now where a Christian or Jewish government executes people for blasphemy, apostasy, or illicit sex; several major Muslim states do.
Earlier this year in Pakistan, after Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer spoke out in defense of a Christian woman sentenced to death for allegedly insulting
Muhammad, Taseer himself was murdered. Large segments of the Pakistani public, including politicians and clerics, hailed his assassin as a hero. Even
in modernized Malaysia and Indonesia, which have legal guarantees for religious minorities and are often cited as models of tolerance among
majority-Muslim states, Shariah courts have the de facto power to bar any Muslim from converting to another faith or (for women) marrying a
non-Muslim.
But many self-styled anti-jihadists? Geller, her guru and comrade-in-arms Robert Spencer, Michelle Malkin, and quite a few others? go further,
claiming that fanaticism, intolerance, and violence are at the core of Islam and that the religion is impervious to reform. Spencer, who blogs at
JihadWatch.org, adamantly asserts that terrorism is the real face of Islam and that so-called moderate Muslims are either liars or dupes who don't
understand the true nature of their faith. As evidence, he and others quote inflammatory verses from the Koran that prescribe the conquest and
slaughter of unbelievers and enjoin the faithful against befriending Christians and Jews.
Yet the Bible has more tiian a few alarmingly violent and intolerant passages, and even the relatively pacific New Testament contains an exhortation
from St. Paul to avoid friendships with non-Christians. Such verses have not prevented most Christians from coming to terms with modernity and liberal
democracy. Much more of Islam is stuck in a pre-modern, authoritarian frame of mind. When a figure like Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi? the Qatar-based
cleric who advocates capital punishment for apostates and homosexuals and the "light beating" of unruly wives? can be an esteemed religious scholar
and a reputed "moderate," it says a great deal about die current state of the religion.
But there are many Muslims who have condemned and stood up against terrorism, including those who recent?y volunteered to serve as human shields for
Christian churches in Egypt after church bombings by Islamist fanatics.There are Muslim scholars who are advocating a revision of Islamic orthodoxy on
issues ranging from women's rights to blasphemy and apostasy, and who are challenging the age-old clerical doctrine that the Koran's earlier, more
peaceful and tolerant verses are nullified by the later, more militant ones. In 2004, over 2,coo Muslim academics from 23 countries signed a petition
condemning "theologians of terror" (al-Qaradawi among them) who use Islamic scriptures as justification for political violence. It remains to be
seen whether such voices will prevail in the Arab Spring sweeping the Middle East.
Islamist radicalism is pervasive enough to pose thorny problems for the West. Even in the United States, where the Muslim community is far more
integrated into the mainstream culture than in Europe, some mosques have been used for terrorist recruitment and some supposedly moderate Muslim
groups have provided a platform to those who advocate violence.
Al-Darsani readily agrees that die Muslim community in the United States has a problem with extremism. "It certainly does not help," he says, "when
their religious leaders use Islam as a tool to vent their political dissatisfaction through violent rants about how evil America is and how the West
is waging a cosmic war against Islam." Yet Al-Darsani is also convinced diat "this is where freedom and tolerance come into play: As second- and
third-generation American Muslims are exposed to freely exchanged ideas and establish themselves in America, they will become an integral part of the
American fabric."
The tolerance this requires is exacdy what the "antijihadists" vehemendy reject. Spencer's Jihad Watch site has argued that even secularized
Muslims are potentially dangerous because either they or their children could revert to militant Islam. Comments threads on anti-jihadist sites are
filled with calls to block Muslim immigration or ban Islam altogether.
With Muslims accounting for nearly a quarter of the world's population, the modernization of Islam is one of the 21st century's most urgent
priorities. But the obstacles to reform come not only from militant Islamism but from Islamophobia as well. The Islamophobes, after all, repeat
everything the Islamists tell Muslims: that the West is implacably hostile to them and their faith, that the most extreme and violent form of Islam is
also its truest form, and that a liberalized Islam is impossible. American Muslims, and America, deserve better.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
Using Swedish rape statistics as a focus, this article aims to empirically describe the way in which different factors affect official crime
statistics produced at the national level. It is argued that cross-national comparisons of crime levels are extremely hazardous when based on official
crime statistics, since the construction rules vary widely. International comparisons of crime levels should as a rule be confined to findings of
international victim surveys. The example of rape statistics in Sweden - about three times higher when compared to other countries in the European
Sourcebook - is used to explain what factors can influence statistics. Statistical, legal and substansive factors are to be taken into account. The
author shows that changes in statistical routines, the legal definition of rape and changes over time all influence the statistics in a substansive
way. This article indicates the great extent to which crime statistics are a construct, whose appearance is very sensitive to the rules applied in the
process of construction. In order to employ statistics appropriately, a thorough knowledge of the principles guiding this process is therefore
essential.
(
www.springerlink.com...)