Targeting Muslims - the new Inquisition

[sonz]

Bradley Burston
Haaretz

Were I a Muslim living in the West, I'd be mad as hell. Not to mention terrified.

Were I a Muslim living in the West, I'd begin to believe that a new Inquisition had begun. An inquisition aimed at no one but Muslims.

Were I a Muslim living in the West, my wife, or my sister, or my daughter might well decide to wear a headscarf or a veil when she went out in public.

Perhaps it would be because she was tired of men and boys ogling her, objectifying her. Perhaps it would be because she felt she was entitled to her dignity. Perhaps she simply might prefer modesty and privacy to fashion slavery.

Perhaps she just thought it was a free country.

And perhaps, on that last point, she would have been mistaken.

For years, and especially since 9/11, law-abiding Muslims have been verbally and physically attacked across North America and Europe. They are scorned for their faith, shunned for their piety, falsely condemned for dual-loyalty, blamed for the crimes of terrorists they abhor.

Of late, however, there has been a disturbing new trend, particularly in Europe, where cabinet ministers and influential lawmakers have increasingly made it their mission to combat, of all things, the head scarf and veil worn by growing numbers of Muslim women and girls.

In Germany, the states of Baden-Wurttenberg and Bavaria recently introduced legislation to outlaw the wearing of head scarves in schools.

Bavarian Education Monika Hohlmeier said the head scarf was increasingly being used as a political symbol. To the understandable ire of Muslims, Hohlmeier went on to say that it was acceptable to wear Christian crosses or Jewish symbols.

In Spain, home to the original Inquisition, Minister for Social Affairs Juan Carlos Aparicio was quoted as having said that the Muslim veil was "not a religious sign but a form of discrimination against women," and having compared it to genital mutilation.

In Britain, the government minister for race and faith relations, Phil Woolas, was quoted this week as demanding that Muslim teaching assistant Aisha Azmi, 24, who refused to remove her veil at work, be fired for that reason.

"She should be sacked," Woolas was quoted as telling the Sunday Mirror. "She has put herself in a position where she can't do her job."

Azmi worked at the Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury, which took pains to state that her suspension had nothing to do with religion.

The scarf issue had already taken center stage when former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, now an MP and Leader of the House of Commons, voiced public objections to the wearing of the niqab, a full-face veil, at face-to-face meetings with his constituents.

The national debate has since widened, with David Davis, a top Conservative Party official, taking the anti-veil stance to a new level.

''What Jack touched on was the fundamental issue of whether in Britain we are developing a divided society,'' Davis said. ''Whether we are inadvertently encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid.''

The anti-veil arguments dovetail with a parallel campaign, which takes as its premise the concept that Islam itself renders its adherents incapable of integrating into Western societies.

"If you are going to have Islamic schools, the question is whether they are going to embrace Western values," Patrick Sookhdeo, a Pakistan-born Anglican priest in England who converted from Islam, told the New York Times this month.

"I would argue that Islamic values are not compatible with Western values," he said.

And what Western values might these be? Are they the time-honored Western values of intolerance for people of color, suspicion and marginalization of non-Christians, fear and loathing of non-Whites? Exploitation of and contempt for the residents of former imperial possessions and colonies?

At this point, there will be a pause for the springloaded Islamophobes among us to suggest that it is any society's right and duty to protect itself against elements that may foment terrorism. There will be those who will argue that the veil may both mask and encourage extremism.

Perhaps it is time for us in the Western world to declare that Islam has a right to exist.

Perhaps it is time for us to recognize that non-violent, non-Judeo-Christian religious observance is a right, not an act of war.

Scarves don't explode. Veils do not kill. The niqab does not incite.

It takes courage to wear the veil in the West. Certainly, no one should be forced to wear it against her will. But those who do so voluntarily, have chosen to brave ridicule, and perhaps to risk their own livelihood. They have made a choice for self-respect, in the face of all that is vacuous in contemporary Western civilization, where the worship of the superficial has taken on the potency and universality of a state religion.

We in the West have allowed the veil to become the symbol of all that we do not know and do not trust about Islam.

In the Age of Paris Hilton, however, the West desperately needs women who devote themselves to serious pursuits, to the betterment of society, women who believe that self-esteem and dignity are worthy values. If they choose to wear a veil, and we take offense, that is wholly our problem. We have no business making it theirs.

http://www.cggl.org/scripts/opinion.asp?id=164

[lavikor201]

Oh please! To call it the new inquisition?

Are they tourturing and expeling all Muslims who do not convert to Christianity in the west now? That is what they did the Jews in Spain.

Not even a Million miles close.

[Dahir]

Oh please! To call it the new inquisition?

Are they tourturing and expeling all Muslims who do not convert to Christianity in the west now? That is what they did the Jews in Spain.

Not even a Million miles close.

Lavikor,

The inquisition wasn't an overnight operation, it started slow.

But I do agree with you, this is no inquisition, probably a minor anti-Islamic offensive, with detention camps in the making.

Muslims are far too great in number to face the persecution the Jews did.

Just my opinion.

[Joe98]

"If you are going to have Islamic schools, the question is whether they are going to embrace Western values," Patrick Sookhdeo, a Pakistan-born Anglican priest in England who converted from Islam, told the New York Times this month.

"I would argue that Islamic values are not compatible with Western values," he said.

And he is the one who should know!

[sonz]

Are they tourturing and expeling all Muslims who do not convert to Christianity in the west now? That is what they did the Jews in Spain.

Not even a Million miles close.

thats what they did to jews?? please it was mostly muslims who were tortured and expelled in spain

[Bittersteel]

And he is the one who should know!

hey Joe I also think western values are not compatible with Islam.and if I offended you saying that then its your problem.western values are not something that has to be followed by everyone.
western values are nothing but secular values nowadays and Christians too are more secular than those who lived centuries ago,IMO.
some religions are not compatible with cohabitation,pre-marital sex,adultery,and "western way " of life.Islam happens to be one of them.

the only thing I like about the west is the economy policy(free-market and everything)

[Nσσя'υℓ Jαииαн]

I think someones history is a bit scratchy...:rolleyes:

[lavikor201]

thats what they did to jews?? please it was mostly muslims who were tortured and expelled in spain

Every single Jew in Spain was either forced to covert, die, or leave all there belongings and go to a new land, and still have a chance to die bec`ause the sorounding countries were implementing the same attitudes to Jews as Spain was.

Now, I am sorry if I am getting ahead of myself but I have a hard time calling the stage Europe and Muslims are at right now an "Inquisition".

Some of the wisest Rabbi's and Sages of our time were killed.

[Fishman]

Every single Jew in Spain was either forced to covert, die, or leave all there belongings and go to a new land, and still have a chance to die bec`ause the sorounding countries were implementing the same attitudes to Jews as Spain was.

They did the same thing to the Muslims as well!

[Keltoi]

What happened in Spain during the Inquisition and whatever is supposedly going on now in Europe are so different from each other that I don't see how one could seriously raise this issue. Are there this many drama majors on the forum? Just kidding.

[Ansar Al-'Adl]

Hi Lavikor,

Don't forget that anti-semitic cartoons were the prelude to the holocaust:

A major tool of the Nazis' propaganda assault was the weekly Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker). At the bottom of the front page of each issue, in bold letters, the paper proclaimed, "The Jews are our misfortune!" Der Stürmer also regularly featured cartoons of Jews in which they were caricatured as hooked-nosed and ape­like. The influence of the newspaper was far-reaching: by 1938 about a half million copies were distributed weekly. [SOURCE]

Hmmm...cartoons demonising a religious minority in europe? Sound familiar?

We are in the early stages again. The level of anti-islamic propaganda is mounting everywhere and the hatred towards Islam and Muslims is increasing. I would think that the Jews would be the last people to forget the process by which a religious group is maligned and eventually, massacred.

Peace.

[Fishman]

Hi Lavikor,

Don't forget that anti-semitic cartoons were the prelude to the holocaust:
Hmmm...cartoons demonising a religious minority in europe? Sound familiar?

We are in the early stages again. The level of anti-islamic propaganda is mounting everywhere and the hatred towards Islam and Muslims is increasing. I would think that the Jews would be the last people to forget the process by which a religious group is maligned and eventually, massacred.

Peace.

I've seen a Nazi cartoon of a Jew, portrayed as a hook-nosed rich man promoting communism. I've also seen a modern cartoon of an Arab, portrayed as a hook-nosed rich man promoting terrorism.

[Dahir]

I think Lavikor is right on this one. The expelling of Muslims was different than the persecution of Jews.

The Muslims (Moors) were militarily/traditionally, slowly kicked out of the land -- but the Jews were force-converted, massacred, etc.

The Jews were much easier to hunt because they came in small numbers and had no protection -- the Moors were too far to intervene.

Lavikor is correct, the Jews faced at least 10x the harshness Muslims did.

[Fishman]

I think Lavikor is right on this one. The expelling of Muslims was different than the persecution of Jews.

The Muslims (Moors) were militarily/traditionally, slowly kicked out of the land -- but the Jews were force-converted, massacred, etc.

The Jews were much easier to hunt because they came in small numbers and had no protection -- the Moors were too far to intervene.

Lavikor is correct, the Jews faced at least 10x the harshness Muslims did.

Muslims were also forcibly converted and kicked out. It took a long time for them to be weak enough for this to be done to them, but it happened eventually. The Inquisition would look out for false Muslim and Jewish converts, and would punish people who practiced other religions. And just like the Jews have many times in their history, Muslims were forced to wear different clothing to Christians, similar to the yellow badge.

No, I don't think what is going on now is as bad as the Inquisition, but if the wrong people (BNP) end up in power, it will turn into another holocaust.

[kadafi]

I think Lavikor is right on this one. The expelling of Muslims was different than the persecution of Jews.

The Muslims (Moors) were militarily/traditionally, slowly kicked out of the land -- but the Jews were force-converted, massacred, etc.

The Jews were much easier to hunt because they came in small numbers and had no protection -- the Moors were too far to intervene.

Lavikor is correct, the Jews faced at least 10x the harshness Muslims did.

Not true at all. Here is what really occured including the quotations from Historians [see bolded lines]:

The Spanish Inquisition

Thomas once again conceals the Spanish Inquisition which primary target were the Jews and the Muslims. They were coercively, and insincerely, converted to Christianity. It does not come as a suprise since Christianity gained most of its followers through forced conversions. Compton's Concise Encyclopaedia states:

This was a quasi-ecclesiastical tribunal established in 1478 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella primarily to examine converted Jews, and later converted Muslims, and punish those who were insincere in the conversion.... The Spanish Inquisition was much harsher than the medieval Inquisition and the death penalty was more often exacted, sometimes in mass autos-da-fe. It judged cases of bigamy, seduction, usury, and other crimes, and was active in Spain and her colonies. Estimates of its victims vary widely, ranging from less than 4,000 to more than 30,000 during its existence...[26]

Encyclopaedia Britannica, states:

The Inquisition's secret procedures, its eagerness to accept denunciations, its use of torture, the absence of counsel for the accused, the lack of any right to confront hostile witnesses, and the practice of confiscating the property of those who were condemned and sharing it between the Inquisition, the crown, and the accusers—all this inspired great terror, as indeed it was meant to do.[27]

The only sole reason why the Muslims surrendered peacefully was due the fact that the Christian officials made a binding treaty with the Muslims which is also known as the ‘treaty of 1492’. In that treaty, the Christian officials promised religious tolerance to the Muslims and the Jews. It was an attempt to win religious tolerance for all the Muslims and Jews left in Spain. Since the Muslims were no longer the rulers of Andalusia, they hoped at least that they would be permitted to worship their Lord, The One God, in the manner presented by the Prophet (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). However, in 1499 CE, Ximenes initiated a campaign to coerce the Muslims of Southern Muslim Spain to Christianity. P. de Gayangos writes:

As a result of his endeavours, it is reported that on 8th December 1499 about three thousand Moors were baptized by him and a leading mosque in Granada was converted into a church. 'Converts' were encouraged to surrender their Islamic books, several thousands of which were destroyed by Ximenes in a public bonfire. A few rare books on medicine were kept aside for the University of Alcala.[28]

The Muslims were dragged through the streets of the Muslim quarter for rejecting to adopt the Christian faith. Consequently, the Muslim initiated a riot protesting that the treaty was not honoured. P. de Gayangos further writes:

Ximenes immediately denounced the uprising as a rebellion, and claimed that by this the Moors had forfeited all their rights under the terms of capitulation. They should therefore be given the choice between baptism and expulsion. The government agreed with his arguments, and Ximenes then began the mass baptism of the population of Granada, most of whom preferred this fate to the more hazardous one of deportation to Africa. The speed with which the baptisms were carried out meant that there was no time in which to instruct the Moors in the fundamentals of their new religion, so that inevitably most of the new converts became Christian only in name.[29]

Additionally, it has been estimated that at least 50,000 Muslims were forced to convert in the mass baptism of Granada by Ximenes. A small amount of Jews and Muslims were deported to North-Africa. The tolerance of the Muslims for the Jews never decreased, so they aided the Jews in the progress of the deportation. In spite of the circumstances, a new Golden Age flourished in North-Africa. In Andarax, mosques were blown up with gun-powder and at Belfique, all the Muslim men were put to the sword whilst the women were taken as slaves. The Muslim children were separated from their parents and handed over to the Church in order to be brought up as Catholics. The Arabic books including the Glorious Qur’an were collected and burnt. H. Kamen writes:

Since the majority of Muslims had been 'converted', the offer of emigration was an empty one, and the 'legal equality' granted by Ferdinand was but a mockery of the terms of the Treaty of Granada which he had so blatantly permitted to be broken. Behind the words of conciliation and peace, the general intention of the Church to eliminate the practice of Islam was unmistakable, and now that the Muslims of southern Andalusia, or the Moriscos as they were called, were within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition, the Inquisitors embarked on the task of detecting 'relapsed heretics' and secret Muslims. The communities of Muslims which had survived the suppression of the rebellion, or reformed after it, were repeatedly harassed by the Inquisitors.[30]

http://www.load-islam.com/artical_de...amic%20history

[Trumble]

I would think that the Jews would be the last people to forget the process by which a religious group is maligned and eventually, massacred.

The Nazi persecution of the Jews had very little to do with their identity as a 'religious' group. It related to them as an ethnic group, in terms of warped ideology of racial superiority and the need to have a scapegoat for Germany's woes at the time.

[lavikor201]

I would think that the Jews would be the last people to forget the process by which a religious group is maligned and eventually, massacred.

The differences is that there are a billion different Muslims all over the world, and many countries in the west and countries from the middle east dislike eachother. Not to condone any action that a european does to an minority but the cirmustances are different. In the 1930's and 1940's Jews were not in anywar with the west, Jews lived lives peacefuly and even fought for the countries during wars sometimes.

Different circumstances, and hopefully for Muslims they do nto come to the same outcome.

[Joe98]

….anti-islamic propaganda is mounting everywhere and the hatred towards Islam and Muslims is increasing.

Let’s talk about my part of the world:

Thousands of Muslims are taken as immigrants and welcomed to a new country. In return.

- A small number of Muslim men hurl verbal abuse at our women because the women don’t dress like muslims. Any complaint is an “attack on Islam”.

- A very small number of Muslim men rape our women. In court the men shout “this is an attack on Islam”

- On a beach on a warm summers day Muslim men play soccer. The ball bumps into many people lying on the beach. The men refuse to follow the local custom which is to apoligise. Instead they beat up a man.

- A foreign cleric comes for a visit and proclaims at a seminar “no westerner can be your friend. Acquaintance yes, friend no“. Which means they can never integrate


I see no propaganda here!

[Ansar Al-'Adl]

Hello Trumble,

The Nazi persecution of the Jews had very little to do with their identity as a 'religious' group. It related to them as an ethnic group, in terms of warped ideology of racial superiority and the need to have a scapegoat for Germany's woes at the time.

First of all, whether one demonizes a religious minority on ethnic grounds or on religious grounds, it is an abomination all the same.

Secondly, if you look at the development of Hitler's views on Jews you will find that his encounter with a religious orthodox Jew was actually a truning point for him:

[Hitler] later wrote in his book Mein Kampf that his transition from opposing anti-Semitism on religious grounds to supporting it on racial grounds came from having seen an Orthodox Jew:

"There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism.

Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?"
(Mein Kampf, vol. 1, chap. 2: "Years of study and suffering in Vienna")

Greetings Lavikor,

The differences is that there are a billion different Muslims all over the world, and many countries in the west and countries from the middle east dislike eachother. Not to condone any action that a european does to an minority but the cirmustances are different.

I never claimed the circumstances were the same but the conflicts with various thirld world countries around the world in no way negates the development of anti-islamic propaganda in the west and the demonizing of muslim minorities in western countries.

In the 1930's and 1940's Jews were not in anywar with the west, Jews lived lives peacefuly and even fought for the countries during wars sometimes.

The Muslims who are the victims of the anti-islamic propaganda machine are no less innocent than those Jews. Are they to blame for the economic and political disenfrachisement of others in third world countries?

Different circumstances, and hopefully for Muslims they do nto come to the same outcome.

I hope so, but almost daily the news proves me wrong:

Religious hate seen as motive in killing
Fremont slaying: Muslim leaders and relatives of Afghan American mother shot at point-blank range say only motive they can imagine for anyone wanting her dead was the garment of her faith, her head scarf


Hi Joe,

Let’s talk about my part of the world

I think we have just above, thank you. Muslim women with their 3-year old chidlren shot point-blank because their only crime was they looked Muslim ? Evidently the anti-islamic propaganda has completely infected your mind to the extent that you are unable to see anything besides the isolated cases of misbehavior which support your preconceived view of Muslims. Let's look at some facts:

In 2004, CAIR processed a total of 1,522 incident reports of civil rights cases compared to 1,019 cases reported to CAIR in 2003. This constitutes a 49 percent increase in the reported cases of harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment from 2003 and marks the highest number of Muslim civil rights cases ever reported to CAIR in our eleven year history.

Regards

[Dahir]

Kadafi,

It seems that you've made a fine point -- that the Spanish Inquisitors were indiscriminately persecuting all non-Christians in the same manner.

My age-old belief was that the Muslims were expelled in the traditional, but respectful military fashion; without harrassment of any kind. And that AFTER all the Muslims were expelled, the Spanish went after the Jews -- who, without Muslim intervention -- were helpless against the Spanish.

But, with some research I've done, it does seem that the Spanish were barbaric and shameless in both military and social conduct during the Inquisition.