Islam’s return to Europe: Assimilation or confrontation, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Islam’s return to Europe: Assimilation or confrontation

Strangers in the Land

By Fouad Ajami

August 2, 2009

A fault line opened in European society. On one side were those keen to keep their world whole and theirs; on the other was elite opinion, insisting on the inevitability and legitimacy of the new immigration. For their part, the new arrivals, timid at first, grew expansive in the claims they made. This was odd: they had fled the fire, and the failure, of their ancestral lands, but they brought the fire with them. Political Islam had risen on its home turf in the Middle East and North Africa, in South Asia, but a young generation in Europe gave its allegiance to the new Islamist radicalism. Emancipated women had shed the veil in Egypt and Turkey and Iran in the 1920s; there are Muslim women now asserting their right to wear the burqa in Paris.

The European welfare state tempted and aided the new Islamism. Two-thirds of the French imams are on welfare. It was hard for Europeans, Caldwell writes, to know whether these bold immigrants were desperate wards or determined invaders, keen on imposing their will on societies given to moral relativism and tolerance. In Caldwell’s apt summation, the flood of migration brought with it “militants, freeloaders and opportunists.”

http://newageislam.com/islam%E2%80%99s-return-to-europe--assimilation-or-confrontation/islam-and-the-west/d/1611

Pakistan and Bangladesh: New Pattern of Military involvement in politics, Islam and Politics, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Politics

Pakistan and Bangladesh: New Pattern of Military involvement in politics - power without accountability

Baladas Ghoshal

18 Nov 2008, 0447 hrs IST,

Instead of fulfilling a promise to establish better, truer democracy, the unelected government helped the process of the politicisation of the army blurring the lines between military and civilian administration. Islamism is a rising threat in Bangladesh and the present government has not taken any meaningful measures to combat the scourge. Instead of containing Islamism and paving the way for the blossoming of democracy, the current arrangement has not only reduced the space for the more established and relatively more secular parties but also helped to consolidate and strengthen Islamist movements, particularly the Jama'at and its ancillary organisations, which had always maintained close links with the military establishments.

The Bangladeshi jihadi outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI ) is suspected to be involved in last month's blasts in Assam. The HuJI is thought to maintain close ties to the Indian Mujahideen (IM), an indigenous terror group that has claimed responsibility for most of the recent bomb blasts across India.

In Pakistan, the victory of the two major political parties in the last elections and the formation of a civilian government, the exit of Musharraf and the seeming neutrality of the army chief, General Pervez Kiyani, in recent political developments, might have given a temporary respite to the country's fledgling democracy. But, the challenge of exercising civilian supremacy over the military still remains a formidable task, and the prospect of the military taking centre stage again cannot be ruled out as the political parties struggle hard to continue their marriage of convenience.

http://newageislam.com/pakistan-and-bangladesh--new-pattern-of-military-involvement-in-politics---power-without-accountability--/islam-and-politics/d/996

Angry Young Muslims: Perspectives on Radical Islamism, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Angry Young Muslims: Perspectives on Radical Islamism

Dealing with extremism on an Islamic basis is primarily a battle for the future of the Arab and Muslim world. Particularly the first dimension of anger described above can only be tackled by far-reaching political reforms in these countries. The autocratic regimes selected as partners in alliances with the West, however, are rarely prepared to take such steps. European governments can call for and support reforms. Yet Europe's policy-makers must start thinking about how their own decisions contribute to increasing or decreasing the potential for anger in the Muslim world. Five brief proposals:

Europe should support actors in the Arab and Muslim world who take peaceful action for change in their countries. This also means accepting that civil society includes not only those involved in secular discourses, but also conservative Islamic forces. One thing is certain: without the national moderate forces of political Islam, there will be no sustainable political reforms in the Arab world.

Political change is never linear; it is always full of contradictions, detours and setbacks. It is therefore advisable to break down the concept of democracy into its constitutive elements for operational purposes. That means in particular the rule of law, human rights, independent justice, transparency, freedom of opinion and free elections, whereby these are the decisive but certainly not the first and only necessary element of sustainable political reform. Democracy – and this is essential – cannot come before a much more all-encompassing process of state building; statehood is instead a precondition for consolidated democracy.

http://newageislam.com/angry-young-muslims--perspectives-on-radical-islamism--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/829