Private muslim school in Virginia has some interesting textbooks

From the AP

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Textbooks at a private Islamic school in northern Virginia teach students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, according to a federal investigation released Wednesday.

Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists."

The passages were found in selected textbooks used during the 2007-08 school year by the Islamic Saudi Academy, which teaches 900 students in grades K-12 at two campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax and receives much of its funding from the Saudi government.

The academy has come under scrutiny from critics who allege that it fosters an intolerant brand of Islam similar to that taught in the conservative Saudi kingdom. In the review, the panel recommended that the school make all of its textbooks available to the State Department so changes can be made before the next school year.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a panel formed by Congress, last year recommended that the school be closed amid concerns that it promotes violence and too closely mimics the conservative Saudi educational system.

Some of the more interesting items:

_ The authors of a 12th-grade text on Koranic interpretation state that apostates (those who convert from Islam), adulterers and people who murder Muslims can be permissibly killed.

_ The authors of a 12th-grade text on monotheism write that "(m)ajor polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible," meaning that a Muslim can take with impunity the life and property of someone believed guilty of polytheism. According to the panel, the strict Saudi interpretation of polytheism includes Shiite and Sufi Muslims as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.

_ A social studies text offers the view that Jews were responsible for the split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims: "The cause of the discord: The Jews conspired against Islam and its people. A sly, wicked person who sinfully and deceitfully professed Islam infiltrated (the Muslims)."

More generally, the panel found that the academy textbooks hold the view that the Muslim world was strong when united under a single caliph, the Arabic language and the Sunni creed, and that Muslims have grown weak because of foreign influence and internal divisions.

One wonders of how tolerant of intolerance an open society can be.

Islamic Body says health insurance illegal

From the Economic Times

NEW DELHI: Comparing the benefits of health insurance policy to gambling, key Islamic organisations have termed the policies as "illegal" and directed Muslims to keep away from them.

At a seminar to deliberate whether insuring health was permissible under Islamic law Shariat, the Islamic Fiqh Academy (India) decided that availing such policies was illegal.

Representatives from around 300 Madrasas, including Darul Uloom Deoband, Jamiat Islami participated in the three-day meet, where they reached a conclusion that seeking insurance cover was only another form of gambling.

Health insurance schemes have turned a noble service in to a business activity, hence under Islam it is not permitted, they said.

An interesting take on the problem of providing health coverage. In a sense, this sort of ruling might encourage something like health savings accounts.

Jimmy Carter, Hamas and Israel

So former President Jimmy Carter decided to meet with Hamas while visiting the region.

Now, Israel and Hamas aren't exactly the best of friends. Hamas claims a divine right to the land Israel is composed of:

Hamas considers all of pre-1948 Palestine to be the Palestinian homeland. This includes present-day State of Israel — as well as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — as an inalienable Islamic waqf or religious bequest, which can never be surrendered to non-Muslims. It asserts that struggle (jihad) to regain control of the land from Israel is the religious duty of every Muslim (fard `ain).

Hamas does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state, unlike the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has recognized it since 1988, and calls it the "Zionist entity". Its charter calls for an end to Israel.

So it's not like they're open to negotiation with Israel. Kinda hard to when your god is telling you to wipe them out.

In response to this, Israel has refused to provide security for former President Carter.

JERUSALEM, April 14 (Reuters) - Israeli leaders shunned former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit because of his plans to meet Hamas and Israel's secret service declined to assist U.S. agents guarding him, U.S. sources said on Monday.

"They're not getting support from local security," one of the sources said, on condition of anonymity.

Now, for it's part Israel is saying in effect it's a paperwork error:

An Israeli security source said the Shin Bet security service provided no protection to Carter during his visit to the Jewish state because no request was made.

However, if Israel deliberately decided to withhold protection, I wouldn't be surprised.

Negotiation doesn't seem to have a point, as Hamas doesn't seem like they're going to rescind a key part of their identity in order to peacefully coexist with Israel. Given that, what exactly is the point of meeting with Hamas if not to antagonize Israel? If antagonism is the point... why should Israel help Carter?

French Extremists Dream of Jihad in Iraq

An interesting article from the AP:

PARIS (AP) — Boubakeur el Hakim traded his Paris neighborhood of boulangeries and halal butcher shops for the insurgent camps of Iraq. When he came home, he told his war stories to other young men on the forgotten edges of French society, allegedly persuading some to follow in his footsteps.

His younger brother did, and died fighting U.S. forces.

After years of investigation by French authorities, el Hakim, 24, went on trial this month in a case exposing how the Iraq war has sucked radical youths from Europe to a battlefield where they have learned skills that officials fear may one day be used in domestic terror attacks.

Along with four other young Frenchmen, a Moroccan and an Algerian, el Hakim is accused of funneling French Muslim fighters to Iraq. All the Frenchmen except suspected ringleader Farid Benyettou, 26, have acknowledged going to Iraq or planning to go. All deny inciting others to go.

All seven men are accused of criminal association with a terrorist enterprise, a vague charge that carries a maximum 10-year sentence, though the prosecutor only asked for between three and eight years.

The case is a delicate one in France, which strongly opposed the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq but has long struggled against homegrown terrorism. It also highlights a dilemma in many European nations with growing Muslim populations: Cracking down hard risks alienating or radicalizing moderate Muslims and betraying western ideals of tolerance.

The idea that French citizens of Islamic heritage could use the situation in Iraq as a training ground is a matter of concern, given recent events.

I wonder how much a sense of alienation among the banlieues is a factor in addition to Islamic Fundamentalism. One could easily fuel the other, and while such things as the French banning certain religious symbols can be seen as an attempt to prevent discrimination against religious subgroups it can also be seen as an attempt to prevent the expression of faith.

Interesting times, indeed.

To be clear, this isn't an exclusively French phenomenon. From the AP article again:

Other European countries have also fed fighters to Iraq.

Two men considered linked to Europe's deadliest Islamic terror attack, the 2004 bombings in Madrid, are believed to have later killed themselves in suicide attacks in Iraq. Spanish authorities have arrested dozens of people suspected of recruiting Islamic fighters for the Iraq insurgency.

Italian courts have convicted several North Africans of recruiting militants for Iraq in Italy in recent years.

Pope to Baptize Prominent Muslim

Well, this is interesting.

So in the latest audiotape from Osama Bin Laden he claims that Pope Benedict XVI is leading a "new crusade" against Islam. The Pope dismissed the allegations.

However, The Pope will babtize a prominent Italian Muslim commentator:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Italy's most prominent Muslim commentator is converting to Catholicism by being baptized by the pope at an Easter vigil, the Vatican announced Saturday.

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim, Magdi Allam has infuriated some fellow Muslims with his criticism of extremism and support for Israel.

The deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, Allam often writes on Muslim and Arab affairs. He told the Il Giornale newspaper in a December interview that his criticism of Palestinian suicide bombing generated threats on his life in 2003, prompting the Italian government to provide him with a sizeable security detail.

Might want to increase that security detail, since under Islamic Sharia law the penalty for apostasy is death:

In most interpretations of Sharia, conversion by Muslims to other religions, is strictly forbidden and is termed apostasy. Muslim theology equates apostasy to treason, and in most interpretations of sharia, the penalty for apostasy is death.

Since Magdi Allam has already been condemned to death, it's not like he could be condemned to double secret death... but it does seem to make him think along less conventional lines ( compared to what one hears of Muslim opinion in the media ):

"Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants," he said. "Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life."

Muslim activist critical of "Multicultural Mistake"

I ran across this on NPR

In 2005, Seyran Ates was named Germany's woman of the year for her work in defense of Muslim women in immigrant communities.

and

Ates blames the rise of political Islam in Europe in great part on what she calls excessive tolerance, both by the left and the right, of repressive traditions of minority cultures — and a widespread unwillingness to integrate immigrants into mainstream society. She calls it the "Multicultural Mistake," also the title of her recently published book.

Forced marriages, she says, are locking up German-born Muslims in separate Islamic enclaves.

There are tens of thousands of women so isolated from German society that they're unable even to call an ambulance.

"We have in the third generation children who do not speak very well German," Ates says. "They cannot speak very well their own language — they are not integrated in the culture, they do not even know how big is the city in which they live in."

Domestic violence and even honor killings take place behind walls of silence.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this story. Ates doesn't seem a likely candidate for a reactionary, and I can understand her frustration. Germany, perhaps like all Western societies, is relatively open. So long as you don't hurt anyone else, you're free to do just about anything.

Including isolate yourself from the larger society.

Forcing others to isolate themselves would seem to be illegal, although one could conceivably convince someone they were better off isolated without using force.

So, how does one solve this? Forced integration into the larger society? If so, who gets to decide what's "normal"?

On the other hand, education alone doesn't strike me as particularly effective. Sure, if the children of first generation immigrants make it to public school there's a good chance they might decide to look beyond their upbringing. On the other hand, if the society is closed enough, children could be born at home with the aid of a midwife; the kids wouldn't have so much as a birth certificate.

Perhaps thats an extreme example; still, if a subset of society refuses to integrate with that larger society, that doesn't seem to bode well for the health of either society.

Previously, it's been a bit rocky but integration has happened. Look at the history of the Irish or the Italians in the US, for example. Perhaps this situation, in a few generations, will be the same... but I can't help thinking such hopeful thoughts are just whistling in the dark.