A Mosque - Photo credit : Oxymanus
Mosque Building Brings Islam Fears to Poland
By REUTERS
Published: April 1, 2010
Reuters
WARSAW (Reuters) - In a sight familiar in some west European countries but new to Poland, dozens of protesters demonstrated in a Warsaw suburb last weekend against the construction of a mosque.
Plans by Poland's tiny Muslim community to build a place of worship and an Islamic cultural centre face opposition in a sign that concerns about Islam may be spreading eastwards to the staunchly Catholic European Union member.
Between 15,000 and 30,000 Muslims, many of them immigrants from Chechnya, live in Poland -- the biggest ex-communist EU state where more than 90 percent of the 38-million population declare themselves Catholics.
Some 150 people protested at the half-finished building site, a 30-minute drive from the city centre, where the Muslim League, a religious organisation established in Poland in 2004 is building what will be only the country's fifth mosque with government permission.
"Such centres are very often sources of radicalisation," said one protester, who like most of the demonstrators was happy to be filmed but unwilling to give his name.
He brandished a banner depicting minarets as missiles that resembled a stark image used in a Swiss referendum when electors voted last year to ban new minarets.
Others chanted "Let's not repeat Europe's mistakes" and "Blind tolerance kills common sense," and demanded that Muslim countries respect women's rights and religious freedom.
"Look at what's happening in Europe, I don't want my daughter to be forced to wear a burka in the future," a male protester said of the all-covering full-length veil which is the object of fierce debate in France.
A Belgian parliamentary committee voted this week to ban the wearing in public places of the burqa and the niqab, a similar garment in which only a woman's eyes are visible.
"I lived in a town in Poland where there were Catholic churches, a synagogue and a mosque and that was fine. But if I go to Saudi Arabia, I cannot wear my medallion and churches where I could pray are banned," said a woman demonstrator.
CATCH-UP?
Such complaints are frequent in west European countries, which have seen an influx of Muslims in recent decades, making Islam the second faith in many. The Muslim population in Europe is estimated at 15-18 million, roughly one-third in France.
The late-2009 referendum in Switzerland was the starkest instance of a rejection of Islam, but Germany and France also have disputes over the construction of minarets and mosques, or the wearing of Muslim headscarves and veils.
"The problems seen in France, Germany or the Netherlands will come to Poland as it is modernising, catching up with the EU's west and becomes more attractive to migrants from poorer parts of the world," said Professor Zbigniew Mikolejko of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
"We will be getting many poor Muslims from North Caucasus. So these protests highlight a fear about the future, a potential conflict. There is no threat now of course, but it shows people expect this trouble to come," he told Reuters.
Until World War Two, Poland was a multicultural society where Catholics, Jews and Greek Orthodox believers co-existed despite some anti-Semitism.
The majority of Polish Jews, Roma and other ethnic minorities were exterminated under Nazi German occupation.
The survivors sometimes endured oppression under the communist system installed in Poland after the war.
Twenty years after the fall of communism, Poland remains a largely homogeneous country of Catholic Slavs, although more and more foreigners live in the capital and other big cities and there are some areas where minorities are concentrated.
Muslim Tatars have lived in north-eastern areas for centuries and are fully assimilated by now. This, however, is not the case of migrants from the North Caucasus.
"This poor Muslim migration started coming in the 1990s when Russia fought the first war there. Chechens settled in closed communities in areas of Poland dominated by narrow-mindedness and so the first problems started there," Mikolejko said.
"Now middle class entrepreneurs from Muslim countries are also coming," he said, adding that the three groups of Muslims tended to live separately.
Pending the completion of the new complex, there is just one mosque for Warsaw's estimated 10,000 Muslims, and it holds barely 200 people in a converted villa in the city suburbs.
"We think the cultural centre is needed for Poland, both for its Muslim community as well as for non-Muslims," Samir Ismail, head of the Muslim League, told Reuters.
Apart from the mosque, due to have a small minaret, the venue will also feature an art gallery, a library and a restaurant and will host classes for children and religious dialogue meetings, Ismail said.
The organisation has gathered funds from sponsors in Qatar, Saudi Arabia as well as Poland.
"There is no reason to stop the construction," said Ismail, who came to Poland from Kuwait to study in 1986 and works as a paediatrician, has Polish citizenship and a Polish wife with whom he has four children.
FEAR
Poland's powerful Catholic church has not spoken out on the issue, but the clergy is divided between xenophobic conservatism and ecumenical dialogue.
So too are Poles in their attitudes towards Islam.
A PBS DGA telephone survey conducted on March 25 among 500 Poles showed 48 percent opposed construction of a mosque with a minaret in their neighbourhood, while 42 had nothing against it.
"This fear comes from a lack of knowledge. There are countries where the assimilation of Muslims is working fine, like in Austria or Norway," said Agata Skoworn-Nalborczyk, an Islam specialist at the Warsaw University.
"The average citizen knows a Muslim was behind the World Trade Centre attacks but doesn't follow the differences within Islam. Poles have simplistic ideas about Islam as they lack their own experience with Muslims," sociologist Mikolejko said.
But Ismail was more optimistic. When asked if he believed the row over the mosque meant west European concerns with Islam had arrived to Poland, he said:
"Absolutely not. There is no need to feel bad. After this dispute we received calls from
Poland, also from non-Muslims, wanting to send us money to support the construction."
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Why the West Fears Islam: The Enemy Within
When one examines the West's fear of Islam, and tries to relate it to the reasons usually given -- Muslim fundamentalism, militancy, radicalism, terrorism, totalitarianism -- it is difficult, if not impossible, to justify this fear on the basis of reasons given. One has to believe, however, given all the facts and expertise available to the West, that the fear has to be rational. What is this fear that causes enemies of the Muslim world to play subtly on the theme of the Crusades in order to demonize Islam and Muslims? Let us first examine what it is not, before we draw our conclusion as to the real reason why the West fears Islam.
The fear of Muslim fundamentalism, militancy, radicalism, terrorism, totalitarianism, and the West's discovery of the "rogue states," appeared quite conveniently with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Former Defense Secretary McNamara, in his 1989 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, said US defense spending could safely be cut in half. It became clear that the US had to either undergo massive shifts in spending, a painful and unwelcome prospect for the defense establishment, or find new justification for continuing high levels of military expenditures. To provide this justification the Pentagon manufactured the threat of "rogue states and nuclear outlaws." The Gulf War was a contrived opportunity to sell this justification to the American people, to protect oil company profits, and to control the flow of oil to Europe and Japan who need it much more than does the US.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies calculates that the $262 billion US defense budget accounts for about 37 percent of global military expenditures. Russia, Japan, and China each will spend about $80 billion, $42 billion, and $7 billion. The six "rogue states" -- Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea -- have a combined annual military budget of $15 billion. The US budgets for covert operations (US terrorism?) alone is double this amount. Given the paltry defense expenditures of all the "rogue states" combined, even after correcting for differences in costs, one has to believe that the "rogue states" are no match, militarily, for the West.
And, leaving aside the morality of US covert operations that invite retaliation, Muslim terrorists should not be a major fear. Far more acts of terrorism and violent crime in the US, according to government statistics, are committed by non-Muslims than Muslims. And if Muslims do pose a terrorist threat to the US, one hears little discussion of what it is that the terrorists really want. Perhaps, all they want is for the West to stop interfering in their countries, in ways that we would never tolerate in the US.
Islamic totalitarianism, an oxymoron to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of Islam, should not be a Western concern. A Muslim ruler may be totalitarian, but then his rule would not be Islamic. Furthermore, the Western record on supporting totalitarian Muslim regimes -- Iran under the Shah, Iraq before the Gulf War -- and doing business with non-democratic regimes -- China, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia -- speaks for itself.
As for Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic law is based upon the Quran, examples and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, analogical deduction, consensus among the learned and individual reasoning. Strict interpretation of the Prophet's words leads to the conclusion that all who believe in one God are Muslim, and their faith is Islam; be they Muslim, Christian, Jew, or anyone else. Fundamentalism is defined in terms of Christian thinking. There is no parallel in Islam that stresses the use of reason and logic. Absent a definition, the label Islamic fundamentalism serves only to obscure issues, rather than to resolve them. Meanwhile, the Christian Coalition, and the Zionists and their biblical claim to Palestine appear fundamentalist to many; yet both are courted by US politicians, and not viewed as a threat.
One can go on eliminating Western arguments against Islam and Muslims. Eventually, one has to ask, what then is the source of the West's fear of Islam and Muslims?
The late Marshall G. S. Hodgson, in "Rethinking World History", states: "[Islam's] conscious hopes for a godly world order represent one of the most remarkable undertakings in world history and because its less self-conscious general cultural heritage is laden with human values."
Muslims see the West beset with broken families, violent crime, and drugs. They see a society divided by race, religion, and huge disparities in income. They long for a peaceful life in which they may provide for the basic needs of their families, and enjoy the respect due to all mankind regardless of their race, religion, position, or wealth.
These Muslims see their goals for a more just and compassionate society thwarted by a corrupt Muslim elite whose primary purpose in life appears to be the accumulation of wealth and power, regardless of the cost to their fellow human beings. They see these elite, who govern not by consensus as Islam prescribes, permitting outside powers to exploit their country while they derive few benefits, and find themselves subordinated by Western influences driving them down the troubled road taken by the West. They see few opportunities to earn a living because most opportunities are withheld for the elite and their sycophants. And they see these elite remaining silent when their faith, which is about all they have left, is denigrated in the propaganda which serves to maintain these elite.
The Muslim elite' allies are the defense establishment and the neo-imperialists. Islam's mandate for justice and compassion opposes the primary objective of these neo-imperialists who seek to follow policies outlined in 1948 by "the leading dove and peace prize winner" Mr. George Kennan, for the US Department of State. In his top secret "Policy Planning Study 23", Mr. Kennan stated in part:
". . . we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population . . . Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity . . . To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality . . . We should cease to talk about vague and . . . unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization."
To avoid exposure these neo-imperialists and their allies in the defense establishment, spurred by the enemy within, divert attention by demonizing Islam and Muslims, thereby fanning the fires of bigotry and raising unrealistic fears among the people of the West.
Release Date: January 26, 1996 -- Rev 2
An Excerpt : The Wisdom Fund, P. O. Box 2723, Arlington, VA 22202
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