Religion and Politics

It has been reported that more than 100,000 visitors attended Germany’s “Open House Day for Mosques” on Friday. It is the 12^th yearly open house (since 1997), and the program was organized by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. It was also German unification day. Around 2,500 exhibitions were organized, and some reports linked the Open House Day to the controversial construction of new mosques, which are “striking at the heart of religious freedom in Germany.”

On September 5, this blog discussed the social debate over the construction of a sensationally beautiful mosque in Cologne. Now, there is news that conservative forces in Italy are also attempting to limit the construction of mosques. Reuters reports that “polls show Italians mistrust Muslims, and a third do not want a mosque in their neighborhood.” The main question now is whether the Northern League will be able to push through a bill of regulations on the construction of mosques. The law will – for example – ban minarets, block mosques from being built near churches, and forbid loudspeakers. There are more than one million Muslims in Italy.

Pope Benedict XVI was in France for three days last week. On Friday he arrived in Paris, where he was met by President Sarkozy and his wife. As regards the intellectual content of the Pope’s visit, a New York Times Article says that he warned “the Parisian intelligentsia of the dangers of secularism.” Sarkozy, according to France24, on his end, “renewed his call for positive secularism,” which he first spoke about in Rome last year and would mean religion playing a greater role in public life. Apparently, the Pope’s aim is to bring faith and reason closer together. Rachel Donadio reported that Benedict XVI’s first visit to France centered on the tensions between faith and reason and that “his message went counter to a deep vein of anticlericalism in France.” She also reported that the Pope is thereby calling for a “redefinition of laïcité,” or secularism (the divide between church and state). The Pope also denounced “fundamentalist fanaticism,” when he addressed cultural figures - including Muslim leaders - two years after his controversial speech in Regensburg.

Picture Source: France24

Last week Cologne’s city council voted in favor of a new and controversial mosque. It will be the largest in Germany when it is complete. According to an article in Spiegel Online, it will cost between 15 and 20 billion dollars, and it will be completed by 2010. The opposition to the new construction has been intense, and the resistance of the right-wing was allegedly based on how to best “integrate” the Turkish population in Germany. According to information from Deutsche Welle, there were some 45 mosques in Cologne, and the right-wing Pro-Cologne Movement argued that this was a sufficient number for the 120,000 Muslims living in the city. Those mosques, however, were mostly abandoned factories and shops. Construction is being carried out by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, and as a New York Times Article reports, “Germans are starting to ask how - or even if - the 2.7 million people of Turkish descent here can square their religious and cultural beliefs with a pluralistic society…” In short, though, since the minarets of the new mosque will apparently be only one-third the height of the towers of Cologne’s famous cathedral and the call to prayer will not be over the loudspeakers, the complaints will necessarily be short lived, and soon the mosque will be a house of worship and even a tourist attraction.

This picture is from the International Herald Tribune/Henning Kaiser/AFP

The picture of the mosque is from SpiegelOnline/DPA

This past week SpiegelOnline published an interview with Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist, who drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 (the simplistic one with the bomb placed on his head). The interview was based around the new development in the saga that the prosecutor general in Jordan has issued a subpoena against Westergaard. In the interview, he says again that the cartoon “was not aimed at Islam as a whole but aimed at the terrorists, who use part of Islam as their spiritual ammunition. You could also say that the terrorists have taken the Prophet as their hostage.” The artist says that many people did not understand his intentions, but at the same time, it also was not in the interests of other groups (politicians and governments mostly) to admit that they did in fact understand the cartoon. Westergaard is 73 years old and now lives under police protection. An earlier article in SpiegelOnline looks more in depth at how his life has changed since his “cartoon would turn into a symbol of the struggle over European values of tolerance and freedom of the press.” Westergaard’s intentions (as spelled out in another interview) were more apparent when he took legal action against Geert Wilders for using his drawing in an anti-Qur’an movie. He said, “Wilders has an overly generalized perception of Muslims as potential terrorists” and that he did not want his cartoon taken out of its original context that aimed at fanatic terrorists.

Europride 2008 took place from July 25 to August 3 in Stockholm, Sweden. This past week, EUObserver.com published an article titled, “Anti-gay Bigotry Spans European Cultures,” which looked at the contrast between gay-friendly societies and governments in Europe and the “frequent reports of violent, homophobic attacks” that nevertheless still take place. The article points out that Europride 2008 was “marked by the attempted murder of a homosexual couple strolling peacefully in a quiet Stockholm street on the night of 28 July.” The reason for this blog is that the article also looks at the situation of homosexuality from the perspective of morality and religion. For example, the Turkish court decision last year to close down an Istanbul LGBT-rights group was based on arguments of morality (and law?) – although not necessary religion or the role of religion in the state. This trend of separating religion from morality has serious consequences for countries, which opt for secular government but do not necessarily restrict specific branches of government, which may disguise their religious verdicts with judgments about morality and what is “best” for society. The article further looks at the issue of gay rights from the perspective of human rights but notes that civil servants and politicians may not actually decide what rights specifically constitute human rights. In fact, and just as the article points out, religious feelings often “discourage frank debate.” A recently proposed EU directive would “put discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation on an equal footing with race, gender, and disability.”  The key difference between these forms of discrimination is the ease with which religion and religious sentiments can be used as justification for acts of individuals, decisions of courts, or government directives. To state an obvious example, it is hardly possible to use religious orthodoxy as a justification for racial discrimination.

Good day everyone, I am Patrick Frost, the FPA blogger for Central Asia, and Karin has been kind enough to let me do a post on this site from time to time. Please feel free to send me comments, critiques, and questions at patfrost1@gmail.com or just post them on this site.

Today, I would like to talk about a book I read about six months ago that challenged the way I saw the West’s political society based on secularization, other societies, civilizations, and political systems throughout the world, especially in Muslim dominated lands, and the current ‘war on terror.’ It is Mark Lilla’s, professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, The Stillborn God; Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. At its most basic, it is a philosophical history of Europe/US advancement from a society ruled by political theology to one ruled by secularization. But the book is about much more, in fact it is a warning against complacency of this type of political/societal system in the West.

Here is Lilla’s dramatic message;
‘Intellectual complacency, nursed by implicit faith in the inevitability of secularization, has blinded us to the persistence of political theology and its manifest power to shape human life at any moment.’

Lilla warns us in the West to not feel so safe and cozy with our secular system, for he argues that we are the ‘exception’, not the rest of the world, and that we are in fact still living in an ‘experiment.’ These are strong words and statements, but they are important for all to ponder. This is a pertinent book because it is based on a question not often asked; ‘Why don’t we understand the ‘enduring attraction of political theology?’ Instead of ‘why don’t they understand our (and copy) our political system and way of life?’

Lilla strongly believes that the argument over politics and religion will not end, and in fact ‘could not end,’ because it concerns the enduring question that all societies must answer and face, whether ‘to order their political affairs in light of a divine revelation, or to make their way alone.’

After the riots in the French suburbs in 2007 (not to mention 2005), Olivier Roy – an expert on Islam and politics – said, “what these guys want is integration.” In a presentation of his book (published the same year), Secularism Confronts Islam, Olivier Roy discussed the “tools” of integration. With respect to the situation in Holland, Roy said, “After 9/11, after the assassination of Theo Van Gogh, suddenly there is a feeling in Europe that [assimilation and multiculturalism], in fact did fail. That multiculturalism is not working or is heading towards very negative side effects, and on the other hand, assimilation in France has created problems – not created, but has opened the door for polemics about what is the place, what is the role for religion in the French public place.”

 This month, Human Rights Watch has released a report titled “The Netherlands: Discrimination in the Name of Integration.”  The research looks at measures instituted by the authorities in the Netherlands “with the stated aim of better integrating its migrant population.” One of the measures is the overseas integration test, which aims to have new immigrants integrate into the Dutch culture before arriving in Holland. The test primarily targets the migrants from two of the three largest immigrant communities in Holland – Moroccans and Turks. These communities have specifically been under greater pressure because of allegations that they do not integrate. “The main targets for these attacks have been Muslim communities, especially Turks and Moroccans.” Human Rights Watch has found that the integration test is discriminatory on the grounds that it is not required from all immigrant communities and the costs of taking the test abroad may pose an excessive financial burden (indirect discrimination). 

In March 2007, Europol published its first annual report on terrorism in the EU. The “EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report” is also known as TE-SAT. With respect to the subject matter of this blog, what useful information about supposedly “religiously motivated” terrorism can we find in the TE-SAT?

• “Islamist terrorists aim at mass casualties.”
• The radicalization process of the suspects in European bomb plots was “reported to have been rapid.”
• The weapon of choice of “Islamist terrorists are Improvised Explosive Devices made with home-made explosives.”
• “Half of all terrorism arrests were related to Islamist terrorism.”
• “France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands had the highest number of arrests of Islamist terrorist suspects.”
• There were cases in the UK and Denmark involving converts to Islam.
• “The majority of the arrested suspects were born in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

The Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor, in an article on the TE-SAT, points out that Europol has reported that the “increase in homegrown terrorists is partly the result of an increase in quantity and a “new quality” in jihadi propaganda in Europe.”  What we might find the most interesting about the TE-SAT is the persistent use of the term “Islamist.” Europol seems to have accepted this term as a proper adjective to describe terrorist acts carried out by groups that base their agendas and targets, at least to some degree, on their view of Islam. However, as Karen Armstrong has written, “These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles.”  Regardless of such deficiencies in terminology, the TE-SAT understands “Islamist terrorism” to be “motivated either in whole or in part by an extreme interpretation of Islam and the use of violence is regarded by its practitioners as a divine duty or sacramental act.”