Islam And The West

Earlier on today I was reading a rather interesting article on the Jerusalem Post website. They’re covering the visit of Libyan leader Colonel Muammer Gaddafi’ to Italy.

As the Post reports during the current visit the Colonel has invited representation from the Libyan Jewish community in Rome.

What really interested me about the article was not the news report  itself but rather a comment by one of the visitors to the site.

Named Amnon, the contributor titled his comment thus Gadhafi is a natural ally for the West and Israel . The following is his comment in full:

“Secular nationalist dictators are realistically the best Middle Eastern ally for the West. We all know that Muslims and Arabs are not inclined towards liberal democracy, so a relatively benevolent dictator of the old guard is the best we can hope for. Quite frankly, we all know that we miss Saddam Hussein. Since America took him out, Iran has filled the void. We need to keep Egypt and Jordan in line, get Syria out of Iranian influence, and co-opt countries like Libya as well.” {Source: Jerusalem Post}

It has been this concept of “realpolitik” or should I say policies that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian that have been at the heart of western dealings with the post-colonial Muslim world.

These western policies manifested themselves in the  Middle East through many decades of support to some rather nasty dictators.  It should be noted that this support has always been at the expense of  freedom and democracy.

Much has been made especially by anti-Islam bigots over the “ungratefulness” of Muslims vis a vis helping to develop the Muslim world.

This “support” should always be analysed through the lens of western aid  for tyrants in the Muslim world. Once this is done, the western bigot can  understand the cynicism shown by many Muslims to western pronouncements about democracy and freedom.

In reality when it comes to democracy and freedom (Westerner and Muslim) are all created equal but some of us are created more equal than others.

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The Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments has launched a new awareness campaign aimed at exposing the reality of the niqab- a veil covering the face to it’s employees:

“In a bid to curb the surge in donning the niqab (a full-face veil), among its female employees, the Ministry of Waqfs (Religious Endowments), has embarked on a controversial campaign to discourage wearing this garb.

“We are not asking the niqab wearers to take it off. The aim of our campaign, based on awareness-raising seminars, is to prove to them that the niqab was originally an Arabian costume in pre-Islamic times,” said Selim Abdel Gelil, an aide to the Minister of Waqfs and the one responsible for the campaign.

The campaign got off the ground this week at the premises of the ministry in Cairo and is planned to cover other cities and provinces of this predominantly Muslim country, according to the same official.

“Islam requires women to be decently dressed without obliging them to cover their faces and hands,” Abdel Gelil told Gulf News….

…Over recent years, the niqab, which covers the woman from head to toe, has become popular in Egypt. Shops, apparently cashing in on the revival of Islamism, have sprung up in working-class and fashionable areas to sell items for Muslim women…

…As part of the campaign, the ministry will publish a book titled “Niqaba Habit, not a Worship” to be distributed for free to female attendees of the seminars.

“There will also be question-and-answer sessions in order to help correct misconceptions about the niqab,” said Abdel Gelil.

“Wearing the niqab is not an obligatory duty based on Islamic Sharia (Law). I think Muslims make a big mistake by concentrating on appearances and superficial things, thereby giving a bad idea about Islam,” Minister of Waqfs Hamdi Zaqzouq was recently quoted as saying in the local press.

He added that niqab-wearers at his ministry would not be assigned preaching missions.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health Dr Hatem Al Gabali has recently warned that female nurses wearing the niqab would be re-posted from hospitals to administrative jobs, saying the costume hampers them from efficiently serving patients.” [Source: Gulf News]

I thought the Muslim world was 100% seething with Islamic fanatics ready to murder the first thing that might undermine Islamic norms. Looks like the anti-Islam bigots were wrong once again.

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Image by Life of Riley

In November 2008 this weblog reported on a call by the King of Bahrain for the Jews of his country to return. This came in the wake of Bahrain sending Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo a Jewish woman to the United States as it’s Ambassador.

Today the New York Times has published a fascinating article surrounding the Jewish community in Bahrain that numbers just 36 members. The author Michael Slackman finds a community well looked after even though tensions are not far from the surface :

“It’s O.K. to be Jewish in Bahrain.

Actually, that may be an understatement.

“It’s fashionable,” said Rouben Rouben, 55, an electronics dealer who proudly displays his name, a recognizably Jewish one, on the sign above all four of his shops in Manama, the capital.

In the tense landscape of the Middle East, there is little room left for Jewish Arabs, a tiny minority in this country as well as in places like Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. But in Bahrain, the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has taken unprecedented steps for an Arab leader to show his support for his dwindling Jewish population. Last year, he appointed a Jewish woman, Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, as ambassador to the United States, the first Jewish ambassador posted abroad by any Arab country.

Then he made a personal visit to London to appeal to expatriate Jews to return to Bahrain. He has also appointed Jewish business leaders to the Shura Council, which acts as an upper house of Parliament. Those measures went against the tide in a region where anti-Semitism is often preached from government-controlled mosques and hating all Jews has become interchangeable with hating the state of Israel…..

..it is a community of only 36, and most are older adults. They are mostly descendants of merchants from Iraq and Iran whose families have lived in Bahrain for centuries, experts here said.

Mr. Rouben said that there were about 600 Jews in Bahrain before 1948, when Israel became a state, “but with every war, more left.” He said that most moved to Europe or the United States.

Few here expect the community to survive unless some expatriates can be enticed to return. So far, there appear to have been few takers….” (Source: The New York Times)

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“The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years…we’ve leapt ahead in all material terms, but the Muslim world would say we have fallen down in all spiritual and moral terms. We have to accept our share of the blame and they have to accept theirs.” ~ Baron Norman Tebbit

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image by snowdog

Image of Emir Feisal who went on to become the King of Iraq and Chaim Weizmann who went on to become the first president of Israel. It was taken in Syria and dated 1918.

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