Headline News 10/03/2019

Headlines

• Dutch Prof Warns No Western Society Has Managed to Fully Integrate Muslims

• Saudi Arabia Criticized Over Human Rights by 36 Countries

• Pakistan Launches Major Crackdown on Extremist Groups

Details

Dutch Prof Warns No Western Society Has Managed to Fully Integrate Muslims

Based on his 20-year-long studies on integration and assimilation, Ruud Koopmans, a professor of sociology at Humboldt University in Berlin, has arrived at the conclusion that Muslims are more difficult to integrate than other immigrant groups.

Professor Ruud Koopmans suggested than no Western country has managed to successfully integrate Muslims. In an interview with the Danish newspaper Berlingske, he stressed that despite individual pattern breakers, the overall picture and the general trend are discouraging. "For anyone who takes facts and data seriously, it is undeniable that Muslims are much worse at integration than other groups of immigrants, no doubt about that. There is also no doubt that in most other groups of immigrants, we see great progress from one generation to the next.

Although it's not completely absent in Muslims, the change is much slower," Koopmans told Berlingske. According to Koopmans' data, around 65 percent of the Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in six European countries consider religious rules to be more important than the secular law of the country in which they live. Muslims consider themselves separate from other non-Muslim groups, and refrain from broader interaction with those outside their religion.

For instance, almost 60 percent of the Muslims surveyed rejected the idea of maintaining friendships with homosexuals, and 45 percent said the same thing about Jews. According to Koopmans, the fundamentalist interpretation of the Quran, which is prevalent among Muslims, prevents them from being integrated into Western countries. According to Koopmans' studies, up to 50 percent of Muslims in Europe hold fundamentalist beliefs.

By contrast, the proportion of fundamentalists among Christians is much lower, at less than 4 percent. In his new book, "The Decrepit House of Islam", Koopmans paints a rather gloomy picture of the Muslim world; one marked by growing fundamentalism and sectarian conflicts. He concluded that when it comes to democracy, human rights, and political and economic development, the 47 Muslim-majority countries are worse off. I conclude that the Islamic world in all these areas is lagging behind rest of the world. Increasingly so in the past 50 years," Koopmans told Berlingske, attributing this to conservative views on the role of women, low investment into children's education and fundamentalist propaganda. [Source: Sputnik].

Since the advent of the Crusades, the West has been trying to integrate Muslims but has miserably failed. Perhaps, Koopmans can learn from the ability of the Khilafah state (Caliphate) to integrate non-Muslims under the rule of Islam for a thousand years, as means of presenting an alternative vision for a xenophobic West.

Saudi Arabia Criticized Over Human Rights by 36 Countries

The letter, read Thursday at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council, is the first collective rebuke of the kingdom. It urges Saudi Arabia to release human rights activists jailed for "exercising their fundamental freedoms" and to "disclose all information available" about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. "I call upon Saudi Arabia to ensure that all members of the public including human rights defenders and journalists can freely and fully exercise their right to freedom of expression and association including online and without fear of reprisals," Iceland's ambassador Harald Aspelund said during the session in Geneva.He called for the release of women rights defenders Loujain al-Hathloul, Hatoon al-Fassi and Samar Badawi and others jailed after campaigning for human rights in the country.Last week, Saudi Arabia announced that prosecutors were preparing a case against a number of the detainees for "undermining the security and sovereignty of the Kingdom." Reading from the letter, Ambassador Aspelund said "investigations into the killing [of Jamal Khashoggi] must be independent and transparent." The collective rebuke was signed by all countries in the European Union, as well as Iceland, Australia, Canada, Norway, New Zealand, Liechtenstein, Monaco and Montenegro. The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally ordered Khashoggi's killing. Riyadh has maintained that neither bin Salman nor his father, King Salman, knew of the operation to target the journalist. Officials have also denied that jailed female activists have been tortured. The statement to the UN council came as Saudi Arabia appears to be facing renewed international pressure in recent days.

Amnesty International said in a statement Wednesday that the moment had come for states to take a stand against the kingdom's violation of rights. Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: "This initiative at the UN Human Rights Council offers a rare opportunity for states to take a strong public stand against the catalog of human rights violations by the government of Saudi Arabia. [Source: CNN].

For several years now the West critical of human rights in Saudi Arabia continues trade with the country, buy Saudi oil and sell the regime military weapons. The growing chorus of chastisement from Western countries will never erode their duplicity over commercial ties with the kingdom.

Pakistan Launches Major Crackdown on Extremist Groups

Pakistan has launched a crackdown on jihadist groups that it claims is more resolute than those of previous governments, who felt “no urgency” to fight organisations that were targeting India, a senior minister has said. More than 120 people have been taken into administrative detention and at least 200 schools, seminaries and hospitals have been seized by the government this week as part of a campaign against banned Islamist organisations.

The arrests and asset seizures, the most sweeping in years, targeted Islamic schools and charities considered fronts for United Nations-blacklisted militant groups that have operated with near impunity in the country.

International pressure has been mounting on Islamabad after a suicide bombing in disputed Kashmir by the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed sparked a series of tit-for-tat airstrikes between India and its neighbour and the first dogfight between their jets in nearly 50 years. India has expressed scepticism that the latest crackdown is different to earlier campaigns of arrests and closures that did little to disrupt the organisations. After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and again following the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, the Pakistani government promised to shut down groups such as JuD. But they have continued to operate openly from the country’s most populous province, Punjab, and expanded to remote corners of the country.

“Previous governments were not serious about cracking down on these anti-India groups, because these guys did not pose a serious challenge to Pakistan, so there was no urgency to work on them,” said Fawad Chaudhry, Pakistan’s information minister. “But we have said that now we won’t let even these organisations work here. No militant organisations can work from Pakistan anymore.” A western diplomat in Delhi said the US, UK, France and others had been urging Islamabad to crack down on militants operating on its soil, which they regarded as “the greatest risk to regional stability”. This was especially so after the Indian government made clear that further attacks would provoke a strong response – which in turn would likely trigger a Pakistan counter, raising the risk of a wider conflict. [Source: The Guardian]

The release of the Indian pilot and the crackdown on domestic militant outfits will never help Khan’s government to solve the issue of Kashmir. Only the Pakistani army can liberate Kashmir—anything short of this is just aiding Modi in his re-election efforts.