Category: Europe

The “burkini” ban is the result of tolerance towards Islamism but it unfairly targets Muslim women

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The “burkini” ban is the result of tolerance towards Islamism but it unfairly targets Muslim women

Mahnaz Nadeem   I remember a drawing room discussion as a young adult, in which a scenario was presented by a secularist Muslim debating a “moderate” Muslim. The secularist argued that if we carried on as we were a time would come where Muslims in the UK would became so publicly religious that it would be at odds with Western society and that we would no longer be tolerated. That stark warning was 20 plus years ago when fatwas and edicts on modesty were becoming religious mainstream. Even putting a Qawwali (Sufi music…

The burkini ban is yet another way of policing women’s bodies

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The burkini ban is yet another way of policing women’s bodies

By Aliyah Saleem   You know what they say: one woman’s bathing suit is another’s tool of Islamism that needs to be crushed before we see the full Islamisation of Europe. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when French officials in Cannes or Nice sat together in their meetings, after sending serious emails to one another to discuss the banning of an ominously named swimsuit. Women of Muslim heritage just don’t seem to get a break. If we aren’t fighting Islamic patriarchy to show our…

Is Charlie Hebdo ‘Islamophobic’ for echoing liberal Muslim voices?

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Is Charlie Hebdo ‘Islamophobic’ for echoing liberal Muslim voices?

By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid   For a publication that has published barely 10 editions satirising Islam in the past decade, Charlie Hebdo has earned its ‘Islamophobic’ label rather effortlessly. ‘Islamophobia’ even in its most liberal definition would at least imply prejudice against Islam, Muslims or any variation thereof. Accusing a magazine that has mocked Christianity thrice as many times in the same duration, and religion in general twice as much, of bias against Islam betrays – at the very least – bias against the publication. Maybe it’s because there weren’t…

Brussels attacks: The responsibility to counter jihadism lies with us Muslims

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Brussels attacks: The responsibility to counter jihadism lies with us Muslims

By Shamila Ghyas   This is a cross-post from The Nation   Another day, another blast. More innocent deaths.   At least 34 people were killed after explosions ripped through Brussels airport and metro station. With over a 100 injured, many critically; the toll number is expected to rise. Eyewitnesses say that after hearing the loud boom, they were literally blown back by its force. There was a lot of blood in the elevators as ceilings started to collapse in the affected areas. Just imagine you are at the airport…

Inopportune defensiveness about Islam

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Inopportune defensiveness about Islam

By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid   This is a cross-post from The Nation   Two very significant recent events have evoked identically counter-productive, nay self-defeating, reactions from Pakistani and global Muslims respectively. The Jamaat-e-Islaami led religious parties’ meeting in Mansoora unanimously condemned the Women Protection Act as ‘un-Islamic’ last week, while the Brussels attacks on Tuesday killed 34 people and injured over 200. Both events exhibit the ugliest shades of Islamism, and both were met with defensiveness about Islam from various sections. As has become the norm, every global act of jihadist terrorism…