Crisis of France’s liberal theocracy
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
3y ago
EMMANUEL MACRON HAS spurred a tsunami of fury in the Muslim world with his brazen defense of the display of a cartoon caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad, which Islam considers blasphemy. The French president was reacting to the killing of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty by a Muslim of Chechen origins, who had been enraged by Paty’s presentation of the cartoon to his class. Patty had known about the Muslim indignation and violence triggered in 2011 by the publication of Muhammad cartoons by the French publication Charlie Hebdo, but he wanted to push the liberal doctrine of free speech, anyway ..read more
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Macron’s latter-day crusade
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
3y ago
EMMANUEL MACRON HAS warned that Muslims are trying to form an “alternative society” in France and vowed to end “Islamist separatism” in his country. The French president was reacting to the murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by a Muslim of Chechen origins, who had been enraged by Paty’s display of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in a classroom. Islam forbids showing images of Muhammad or God, and Paty indicated that he had been aware of it; but he wanted to push the liberal doctrine of free speech, anyway. It is a classic clash between France’s “liberal fundamentalism,” to quote Canadian ph ..read more
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Biden and evolving Islam
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
3y ago
SEVERAL AMERICAN MUSLIM friends, spooked by President Trump’s “Muslim ban,” shift of America’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and other anti-Muslim acts, are getting excited about Joe Biden’s steady lead over him in the polls. I am trying to douse their enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential nominee for several reasons, especially because Islam and liberalism, the creed of the West, are evolving fast. Electoral polls can be notoriously misleading.  About this time four years ago Hillary Clinton was way ahead of Trump in the polls. Yet on the early evening of Election Day, Trump’s winnin ..read more
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India’s lesson for Lebanon
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
3y ago
I NORMALLY CAN’T stand Boris Johnson because of his demagoguery and conservative political creed. But last week Emmanuel Macron made me appreciate the British prime minister, for the first time.  The French president was in Beirut, on his second trip since last month’s massive explosion in the Lebanese capital. He warned politicians there that they had “the last chance for [their] political system,” which is based on sharing political power and interests among the country’s half a dozen religious-political factions. The system had been introduced in Lebanon by imperial France after World ..read more
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China plots to encircle India
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
3y ago
“Yay!” I exclaimed within myself. China will be upgrading the Sylhet airport, a blurb said on the Internet. Sylhet is my hometown in northeastern Bangladesh. Sylhet’s Osmani airport is rather small and every time I fly in to the city, I have to hustle through a crowded arrival lounge into the hurly-burly of a packed parking area. Sylhet, too, is close to the Indian state of Assam, where I was born. I felt good about the prospect of traveling more comfortably from Sylhet to see my friends and relatives in India. I was browsing through news sites on my laptop in my living room in the Washington ..read more
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John Lewis: Icon of a bygone era
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
4y ago
John Lewis, who died last week, will shine in American history as a great hero who fought valiantly for the rights of African-Americans in the 1960s with a vision of the 1960s. When he was 16, Lewis went to a library to get a membership card. He was denied the card because the library was only for white people. When he was outside home and would become thirsty, the boy from Troy, Ala., had to scamper up and down looking for a water fountain marked for the “negroes.”  And we know what happened to him on that “Bloody Sunday” in March 1965. When Lewis and his fellow civil rights marchers rea ..read more
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Can Israel digest 30% of West Bank?
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
4y ago
WASN’T BENJAMIN NETANYAHU going to extend “Israeli sovereignty” to 30 percent of the West Bank, beginning July 1? Well, July 1 came and slipped quietly away, but the Israeli prime minister didn’t annex an inch of the Palestinian territory. What has happened to his plan? Rabbi Sharon Brous tells us what has. An influential leader of American Jews, she indicated that wiser Jewish views drove home to Netanyahu that annexing a large chunk of Palestinian land would be “catastrophic” to Israel. Writing in the online newspaper The Forward, the Los Angeles rabbi said that these Jews are worried t ..read more
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Are they killing Gandhi’s soul now?
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
4y ago
SYLHET, Bangladesh: India is in turmoil from an historic clash between two “nations.” Most Indians and most of the rest of the world are waiting to see which of the two triumphs in the “world’s largest democracy.” The latest clash between the two types of nations has centered on a couple of pieces of legislation, passed by the Hindu nationalist Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These laws would relegate the country’s 200 million Muslims into second-class citizens. If implemented, they would also drastically erode India’s foundational ideology of secularism. Widespread publi ..read more
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Mahmud Ali: Generals wrecked Pakistan
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
4y ago
MAHMUD ALI’S BIRTH centenary on September 1 reminded me of a comment Jawaharlal Nehru made during his meeting with George Bernard Shaw in London. Independent India’s first prime minister, a driven Fabian socialist, had been invited to attend the June 2, 1953, coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey. That was “a formal occasion,” he told Shaw when the celebrated Irish playwright arrived to see Nehru at the Indian prime minister’s personal ‘Mahmud Ali (right), then minister of social work in Pakistan, is greeted by then Chinese Prime Minister ..read more
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Did generals wreck old Pakistan
Muslim Journey
by Mustafa Malik
4y ago
MAHMUD ALI’S BIRTH centenary on September 1 reminded me of a comment Jawaharlal Nehru made during his meeting with George Bernard Shaw in London in 1953. Independent India’s first prime minister, a driven Fabian socialist, had been invited to attend the June 2 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey. That was “a formal occasion,” he told Shaw when the celebrated Irish playwright arrived to see Nehru at the Indian prime minister’s personal invitation, sent from Delhi nearly a month before. The more important event for him, Nehru added, was “meeting you,” the best-known i ..read more
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