Posts

Launch Wars & Win the Hearts & Minds of ARAB's by launching Arabic Language Channels!

In depth

More on the show All the latest media news

Empire traces how global media has been dominated firstly by traditional superpowers and more recently by new high-tech giants who are increasingly dominating almost all forms of media, whether on the airwaves, in print or on the web.

The future of journalism in this new media landscape is unclear as are, many have suggested, the real purpose behind a raft of new national news channels.
 
Propaganda, often labelled a so-called battle for hearts and minds, has long been an essential tool for superpowers such as the US.

To project their influence and authority around the globe, once dominat empires like France and Russia, and emerging powers such as China and Iran all now have 24 hour TV news channels beaming their version of events into homes around the world as they try to compete with US media giants for global influence. 

Paradoxically, the likes of Washington's AlHurra channel or London's BBC Arabic cannot be seen in their own lands.
 
But the new frontline is online. While the technological revolution helped liberalise and popularise information like never before, Web-based giants have been attempting to monopolise  the alternative global source for information.

Google and its subsidiary Youtube are one example. As this web empire ventured into news, it sucked content and readers from traditional news sources and, in the process, the lifeblood from the print media, the backbone of modern journalism.
 
With global media now in the hands of supra-national players peddling their own agendas and internet giants in search of profit and influence, Empire asks what's the future for journalism in the age of media empires.

Empire can be seen from Wednesday, August 26, at the following times GMT: Wednesday: 1900; Thursday: 0300, 1400; Friday: 0600.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/empire/2009/08/2009825125531295342.html

Climate change: Minority report  By Peter Taylor

By Peter Taylor

Some climatologists believe current rises in temperatures and melting icebergs are part of of the Earth's natural cycles, and not induced by man-made devices [EPA] Concern over global warming has spawned such a highly charged and polarised political movement, that real science has become sidelined in favour of sound-bites and simple messages. The real science is not as 'settled' as some politicians would have us believe.   There is a significant minority of climate scientists who look at the data and conclude that we are dealing with natural cycles that are peaking just as they have done on a regular basis over centuries. in depth These scientists are heavily outnumbered by the proliferation of computer specialists who have created their own virtual planet – people trained in maths and physics who may never have handled an ice-core, tree-ring apparatus, sediments or stalagmites and all of the proxy indicators of past temperature cycles. In my view, the UN secretariat has marginalised their careful assessment and warnings about natural cycles in favour of alarming future projections generated by the computer model. These real climate scientists know that the last major warm period was a 1,000 years ago when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland – their graves are still solid in the permafrost. In between then and now, Europe and China experienced a Little Ice Age – with widespread famine. Reading the fine print Taylor says satellite data debunks theories that climate change is unnatural There is so much spin that you have to read the small print of the UN reports where they admit to not understanding natural cycles and what drives them. Behind the scenes they acknowledge cycles are at work and contribute to the warming and that it is only from the model that they derive the dominance of carbon dioxide. But the model does not easily simulate the poorly understood cycles. Satellites do a better job and having spent three years studying the data I conclude global warming is real but at least 80 per cent natural cycle and 20 per cent human emissions. My conclusions are supported by recent climate shifts that run counter to model predictions. From the data on cycles I could predict that after 2007, when Arctic summer ice reached a record low, it would start to recover. In 2008, it came back by 10 per cent. The majority expected it to continue its decline to ice-free status by 2015. In 2009, it grew by another 10 per cent. Little Ice Age The models beloved of the majority also predicted that the high-level winds, known as the jet-stream, would shift north as the globe warmed. The jet-stream directs wet weather from the Atlantic and in 2007 they shifted south, bringing widespread flooding to Western Europe. I have seen a minority report in Nasa's archives which shows that the jet-stream shifts south as the magnetic field of the sun falls and this was characteristic of the Little Ice Age. In 2007, the sun's magnetic field fell to an all time low and this repeated through 2008 and 2009, as did the floods. Many solar scientists point to a link between this magnetic field and climate on Earth and when the field is low, the Earth cools. During the low in the 17th century the Thames in London froze every winter for 50 years and summers were a washout. Chinese and Russian scientists have better knowledge of these cycles, because the cold periods induce widespread famine – and some of them see all the signs of a new Little Ice Age. Perhaps that's why their governments' sovereign funds are buying huge tracts of productive land in the tropics – for food. You may ask – if this is real science, how can the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ignore it and claim the warming is caused by carbon dioxide. Global spin? Taylor says scientists may have manipulated data on emissions [AFP] In fact, the scientists only agreed the warming is "very likely not due to known natural causes acting alone" – and that is spun by the policy-makers and the world's media. The not-known natural causes are subject to high-level research programmes because real scientists know they exist and are powerful. And no real climate scientist ever said natural causes are acting alone. Up until the recent 'climate-gate' scandal, I accepted that the objective data could be trusted. But it now appears scientists upon whom the UN relies were busy manipulating the data to produce a warmer globe and to eradicate what they call 'lips' (i.e. cycles) that they cannot explain. To compound matters, they then sought to undermine the Freedom of Information Act and delete their records in advance of requests for the data. The issue of causation is crucial. The poorest people are already at risk whether the globe warms or cools. We need action on the real and immediate threats facing human support systems from unavoidable natural climate change – but less than one per cent of resources devoted to climate are spent on adaptation, the rest goes on what will be ineffective attempts to 'stop climate chaos'. Peter Taylor is an ecologist and author of 'Chill: a reassessment of global warming theory'. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/climatesos/2009/12/2009124191343603151.html

Yahiya Emerick

I had to do it. I'm a science fiction fan and it's been a while since I've seen a good sci-fi flick. Yes, I dragged my wife to the theater and saw a recently released spaceship/action movie. When I viewed the previews of giant insects and battling space marines, I thought for sure I'd like it. But I was definitely unprepared for the visual assault. The special effects were pounding my senses and I felt uncomfortable. I don't recommend taking your children to see most movies these days, for in addition to the gratuitous violence, they almost always throw in unexpected and unnecessary nude scenes. I closed my eyes and was quite annoyed because they normally don't put such filth in science fiction movies. I was raised on Star Wars and other innocent productions. (Society's standards just keep getting more polluted, don't they?)

In my time I've read quite a lot of novels dealing with science fiction, space colonization, aliens, conquering the galaxy, etc... But it never really quite hit me, until seeing this movie, that we as Muslims had better pay attention to more than just what's here on earth.

It's funny, really, when you think about it. Islam is the most suppressed ideology on earth. There is not one single country that is based solely on standard Islamic teachings. There is no society that reflects even a hint of the Islamic ethos and no culture which promotes Islam as a viable way of life, independent of ignorant local customs.

On the contrary, in every country that happens to have a lot of people with Muslim names in it, the national government will do everything in its power to suppress any hint of Islamicity in the people or in politics, even to the point of mass executions, torture and all-out war. (Think of Turkey, Algeria, Syria, Tajikistan, China, etc...)

The only place where Islam, and I mean real Muslims- not those crazy terrorists masquerading as Muslims- can operate freely is in America, Canada and England. Everywhere else, including France and the rest of the world, they're harassed, arrested, denied rights and suppressed. It's pretty sad when you realize that the only thing real Muslims want is peace and justice and obedience to God, while everyone else in the world wants the opposite.

So what direction is the world going in now? Muslims are marginalized completely. Some Muslims get so frustrated with their lack of success in spreading the Islamic lifestyle that they become clandestine rebels in their home countries and fancy themselves an underground "liberation" movement. But they often become deluded and can't pick their agendas well, thus, based on a few short-sighted individuals, the media all over the world can shout about the world-wide "Islamic threat." The unbelievers (and the hypocrites in our ranks) join together and convince the gullible masses that Islam is bad and so the focus of the world must be containment of the "Islamic menace."

The world powers that be have succeeded pretty well. But in lumping all people with Muslim names into one bunch, the world has done a great dis- service. Most of the people with Muslim-sounding names in the world, who are involved in "terrorism," are people acting from political, not spiritual motives and they don't have the support of the Muslim masses anywhere in the world.

Based on published reports and studies, the average Palestinian or Lebanese person doesn't really care about an "Islamic" state. They want Israel out of their lands. (I have enough friends from both ethnic groups who have confirmed this.) The average Pakistani militant or Afghan warlord, likewise, cares little about the ethics of Islam, they have some political, personal or nationalistic agenda to pursue. If it's convenient to use well-known religious phrases and slogans from one's own culture, so be it. Even the Jews fly their, "Star of David" flag but most of them don't follow Prophet David's religion very well.

What the world hasn't realized is that there is a silent majority of Muslims who want an Islamic state that has nothing to do with bombs, repression, censorship, oppression, chauvinism or violence. The Islamic state we envision is actually not too much different from the modern American legal, social and political expression. Among the few differences would be that the basis of the legal code would be derived from the Qur'an, rather than from simple majority rule. After all, it was the opinion of the majority that allowed slavery and oppression of women in this country. (A good presentation of an Islamic government at work can be found in the book, "Al Ahkam as Sultaniyyah" by Abul Hasan al Mawardi. It's in English!)

There would be elected leaders, representatives, an independent judiciary, a tax agency, non-interest based banks, theaters, shopping malls, suburbs, etc... The Qur'an and example of the Prophet would be the basis of cultural and social norms and if you've ever really looked at them, they're very lenient, understanding and beneficial. In addition, laws that forbid indecency would be enforced. And what's so bad about that? In America today, the law books are filled with anti-indecency laws, they just haven't been enforced in a few decades. Look at the social devastation that that has wrought!

The Islamic government would simply enforce the laws that even American courts are supposed to. That's all we want: a government based on eternal principles as revealed by our Creator and a stable and peaceful commonwealth. Those who use Islamic symbols or names, but then do deeds of violence against civilians, are no better than calling the KKK or the Nazis good Christians. We Muslims know the difference between genuine religious seekers and hypocrites, so why is the world so unwilling to recognize that too? Well, we haven't been doing our job of spreading Islamic information very well so I guess this is the situation we deserve.

But while the world has been busy suppressing Muslims, regardless of whether they're "good" or "bad," what else has it been up to? It seems clear that the global trend is towards a more unified and closely linked world, both in political and economic terms as well as in social terms. There seems to be a mono-culture forming all over the place! Whether you're in Botswana, Brazil or Belgium, you drink soda-pop, wear jeans, listen to popular music, surf the net, eat burgers and pizza and wear shirts that say, "DKNY".

Nations are making trade links with each other, establishing free trade zones that cover whole hemispheres and even mutual defense pacts and large alliances. NATO will probably grow to encompass all of North America, all of Europe and Russia, too, within twenty years or so.

Gee, when I read that Libya and Egypt wanted to make a North African trading bloc, I thought, big deal! A bunch of dictators wanting to link their sorry backward economies. But it'll fail like the pan-Arab nation ideas failed in the Fifties and Sixties. It will fail because the leaders of Muslim nations are not interested in the improvement of the lives of their people. After all, the leaders killed and plotted their way to power in the first place and continue to work against the people to maintain their god-like power even now. The armies in Muslim countries don't defend their people from outside enemies, the armies defend themselves, and the dictator who pays them, against their own people! How can you expect benevolent and beneficial actions from them?

Now, back to the main point: A lot has been promoted in the past few years that has resulted in what recent space/action movies such as, "Starship Troopers," "Armageddon," "Deep Impact," and "Alien Resurrection" represent. The setting for the background of "Starship Troopers," for example, is that there will one day be a single world government and that earth will establish many colonies throughout the galaxy. Men and women are completely equal to the point where they even take showers together- in the same locker rooms- and there is no sexual harassment. Everyone in the world speaks English and lives a secular, American-style lifestyle.

The action part of the movie revolves around the idea that a race of giant insects from a far away planet are at war with human civilization. The earth government decides to go on the offensive and the rest of the movie is filled with scenes of tough marines landing on alien "bug" planets and doing battle with giant beetles, soldier bugs and "brain" bugs.

If you put the action and aliens aside for a moment, think about the vision of the future that is presented. The world is united in a benevolent system that is similar to a secular, Western democracy. Everyone has a similar culture based on elements of modern Western culture. Unrestricted sex is the norm and there is no talk of whether morals and values are important. Everyone drinks and everyone is just a good citizen who can live their lives as physically self-fulfilling as possible. And don't forget, people have colonized the stars and taken this way of life with them.

In this vision of the future, there is no Islam, there are no Muslims and a person's values are quite up to themselves. Religion and spirituality are as marginalized and non-existent as they are in current Western society.

Indeed, you can see the beginnings of similar forces taking shape right now. The international space station, humanity's first step to permanent space colonization is scheduled to be built starting next year. America, Japan, Russia and other secular powers are taking the first steps to permanent human colonization of the stars. Meanwhile, back here on earth, the forces arrayed to crush spirituality and allegiance to God have succeeded in destroying Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Shintoism. Those traditions have bowed their heads and become relegated to quaint ceremonies and occasional nationalist sloganeering.

The only real challenge left, Islam, is being suppressed everywhere and unIslamic cultural influences have corrupted almost all the young people in every Muslim country. The Western world has established its hegemony and control over the world's resources, finances, culture and technological direction. China and its "communism" is the only wild card left in the world and there is likely to be conformity there as well, eventually.

What kind of world are we coming into? Even though millions of people convert to Islam every year, millions more, from the Muslim world, are lulled into secularism and become opponents of things related to Islam. Sometimes I almost feel that it seems like a few Westerners are becoming Muslims while most "Muslims" are becoming kaffirs. Interesting thought. But back to the main issue.

Where are Muslims in this coming new world and new frontier of space? Oh sure, a "Muslim" Saudi Prince went up in the space shuttle. Big deal. He didn't design it, his country didn't launch it and he was just a token presence. Anyway, what is so Islamic about a "Prince" coming from a "kingdom"?

Oh, Kazakhstan has the Russian spaceport on its soil, you say? Well, as if Kazakhstan is an Islamic or even a Muslim place! Half the population or more is Russian, the Russian government controls the spaceport and almost all of the so-called Muslims who make up the rest of the country are illiterate in Islam. They live like non-Muslims in their attitudes just like most people from Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey or wherever. There is no Islamic purpose being served there.

Muslims have no space technology, we don't even have any Islamic state here on earth to begin with! Even if Malaysia sent a rocket into space tomorrow, what of it? Malaysia isn't patterned after an Islamic system either. Even the Prime Minister's own daughter goes on television defending the "right" of women to wear bikinis! (See Impact International, Oct, Nov 97.)

Within fifty years, the non-Muslims, mostly of Western heritage, will have not only permanent space stations, but also moon colonies, Martian colonies and perhaps one day, self-sustained colonies on every stable moon in our solar system.

Where will the Muslims be and what will be our position? Will we still be a suppressed movement in the world. Will frustrated people with Muslim sounding names still be planting bombs to achieve political goals in their tiny, backward countries? Will "Muslim" nations still be ruled by the same old kind of small-minded bullies and dictators that we have now, just with new names? Will the armies in "Muslim" countries still have as their primary goal to "protect" themselves against the people?

I know that there are quite a few Muslims who suffer from the same disease that afflicts fundamentalist Christians. That disease is thinking that the end of the world and the Day of Judgment is going to happen tomorrow. I know it can happen anytime and that it is "near" but the Prophet said it was "near" over a thousand years ago! It must be remembered that "near" on Allah's time- scale can mean a long time in earth years. Consequently, Muslims don't think about the future or about where we will be three hundred years from now.

Who cares about whatever "golden achievements" our ancestors made five hundred years ago! The past is dead! This is our present and future! Today, we don't live Islam, we don't make a government based on Islam, in fact, we live worse than the non-Muslims in our desire for wealth, glitter and illusions of power and glory. We don't make progress and we label "ethnic achievements" as progress when they do no service to Islam.

Who cares if Malaysia or Iran or Indonesia or Pakistan has high technology! Those countries don't do any good for the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad! The leaders are corrupt, the systems are unIslamic and the economies are riddled with Riba, corruption and inefficiency. Who cares if this or that Arab nation has a big army and powerful weapons. The government is bad, the leader is a crook and the weapons are usually turned against the people to insure the power of the corrupt elite. Do you see what I'm getting at?

The Blessed Prophet once predicted this situation when he said, "You will be ruled (one day) by men who will kill the Sunnah, violate the orders of Islam and delay the time of Prayer." A man named Ibn Mas'ud asked, "What should we do then?" The Prophet replied, "Don't you know what to do? Whoever disobeys Allah must not be obeyed." (Ibn Majah, Ahmad).

The strength of Islam is to be measured by the standard of Islam: the following of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Who is following it? Where is it being implemented? What has been built that will promote those teachings? Where is an identifiable community living by the Islamic ethos? Since those objectives are not being achieved anywhere in the world, Muslims are making no progress and are completely unprepared for the future with all its globalization, space exploration and challenges.

To reiterate, it doesn't matter if some ethnic group or another is advanced. Who cares if the Arabs, Pakistanis, Turks or Malays have booming, technologically advanced countries? It doesn't serve Islam if those people are not molding their lives, cultures, finances and political systems according to the Qur'an and Sunnah.

There are some good steps here and there, such as the growth in Islamic banking, the rededication to Iman among many and the building of Masjids again in places where they were closed. But these things are merely band-aids on a patient that is having a massive seizure and hemorrhage!

What good even is the making of millions of converts in the West if their own, isolated children will be susceptible to the unIslamic influences of non- Muslim culture which will assault them at every turn. The children of converts most often go back to being the non-Muslims their parents were before converting! (I've taught for ten years the children of "born Muslims" and converts and can attest to this fact.) Muslims don't even make communities here in the West- where they are allowed to and no one will try to stop them!

Something has to give. Something has to be done. I know the problem seems pretty big. What can you or I do about it? Only Allah knows the future. Here's how I envision events. The "Muslim" movements in most of the "Muslim" world are being run and operated by unsophisticated, uneducated people. They may have degrees and PhD's, but they grew up in under developed nations where running water might have been a miracle. They were raised on a mixture of Islam, culturalism, superstitions and simplistic ideas.

Now before you get mad and write angry letters, hear me out. I know of Muslim leaders, who have a lot of power, and who I've met, who believe that it's okay to kill a girl if she "brings shame" on the family. I know a big Imam who believes you have to say Surahs in a new home to drive away the Jinns before you can live in it. I heard a speech by a big Sheikh in which he spoke of Islam as a tree that is fed by flying body parts, running blood and death. (His imagery was so disgusting and gruesome that I couldn't listen anymore.)

I've heard countless big Maulanas expound on the need to seclude women in the home, and even in the recent Qur'an translation being touted by the Salafees, the tafsir (translator's commentary) says that women are not allowed to go to the Masjid and that the face veil (niqab) is required of women. But the sayings of the Prophet tell a different story! So who do you believe?

I know of "Muslim" groups who oppose the formation of battered women's shelters saying that women should stay in abusive relationships no matter what. And then they throw fifty thousand "Fatwas" in your face. (But the Qur'an says that a woman can divorce and leave her husband if she fears cruelty from him! See 4:128) Again, cultural, ethnic Muslims interpret Islam by their backward, cultural standards.

The Taliban, who claim to be totally "Islamic" do the most unIslamic things: they forbid women to work or even to go to school. They beat people with sticks to reprimand them, and, oh, by the way, quite a few heroin growers operate out of their territory. Even before them, the so-called "Mujahideen" of Afghanistan were financing their war against the Soviets with drug-profits. After the Soviets left, the "Mujahideen" have killed more of each other than the Soviets ever did. So where is the example of Islamic enlightenment there?

The Jamati Islami in Pakistan is discredited from too much political game- playing, the secretive Ikhwan is known to be oriented only towards particularly Arab political concerns. (Even their front organizations in America and Canada focus completely on the Middle east and/or Arab culture and concerns.) Moreover, the usual approach to Qur'anic "studies" in most "Muslim" countries is to beat the students with a stick! Is that Islamic enlightenment?

Even worse, in the West, in most Masjids, the boards of directors are usually made up of people who compete with each other in displaying wealth. Hardly an Islamic thing to do. (By the way, according to the Qur'an: 9:107-108, even hypocrites can build a Masjid! A believer is not supposed to go there, either.)

What does it mean when a "scholar" says that having a king is Halal or when an "Islamic" organization is funded by kings and others? What about the so- called "Islamic" movements who have as their objectives merely freeing a bit of land from someone else? Those are political ideas that are not done for Allah. The Blessed Prophet once remarked that if someone associates anything with their deed besides Allah, then Allah will reject the whole thing. So a group may say "Allahu Akbar", but if they're desire is based on the boundaries of their little nation, then they may be in trouble in the next life. Rather, a true "Islamic" movement doesn't stop at the border. It moves on until there is justice, peace and obedience to Allah either over the entire world or until they die- either way they win.

All those "Islamic" movements are inward looking, locally centered and usually ethnically based. The few true believers among them can literally be caught up in the tide. But it's the true believers who must be the leaders! (See Qur'an 3:139)

So if I've made myself clear, we see that there are few movements, groups or "scholars" which operate solely by Qur'an and Sunnah and solely for the sake of Allah in the "Muslim" world. There are too many cultural ideas, too many shifting political goals and too many emotions. (Oh, did I mention, many of these movements publicly allow wife-beating to their followers with "fatwas" saying it's halal. But they're wrong of course.)

Once we realize the hard facts, we can be liberated from illusions and false ideas which will only corrupt us. After all, among Muslim activists in North America, there is also an element of the sicknesses of the wider Muslim world. For example, there is veiled racism among most of the "Islamic" movements in the West. What else can you say when there are Arab, Black, Indian or Pakistani exclusive organizations? No one prevents them from mixing and they usually have branches in most major cities where the other groups operate as well. Culturalism and ethnic exclusiveness are quite pervasive! (I've seen too much of it first hand and I'm sure you have too.)

Now what about change? What can we do that can realistically turn the tide in the favor of true Islam? Firstly, I envision Muslims going on an information offensive on the outside, while conducting a purification campaign on the inside. Outside, we will get serious about teaching Islam. After all, it's one of our main missions in life. Don't focus only on your job or kids or financial goals, because that's not why you're mainly here.

You're here to find Allah before you die and there's not much time left. After you've found Allah then you can take care of your family, job and goals in an Islamically good way. But most of us go in reverse. We try to get rich and have big families first and then we become spiritual when we're old. But by then, our money won't matter much anymore and our kids have become non- Muslims. Quite a strange paradox. I would rather take care of the spiritual part first and then all along I can be doing the other things.

I envision a da'wah headquarters in every state and urban area. A building with dozens of workers whose job it is to organize da'wah programs in the Masjids, communities and especially among the non-Muslims. It will be staffed by dedicated people who are organized into different departments, who design flyers, book speakers, follow up on contacts, design campaigns, visit churches, operate soup kitchens, offer counseling, have housing bureaus, women's shelters and coordinate the activities of Masjids.

The workers will be hired based on their qualifications for this sort of job, not because they happen to have a Muslim name and just got off the plane and need a job. They will be well paid at a living wage and will have job security and a professional, pleasant working environment. The operation will be funded by a waqf set up by all the communities which will provide a permanent income. Not through endless donation, because that dries up and becomes subject to outside pressure. Rather, a gas station or apartment building will be bought and given in trust to the Da'wah center to which all profits will go, forever. (Such an enterprise could provide job search services to needy converts or poor Muslims.)

I could write for hours about how it would be structured and operated and the types of activities it would perform, but why don't you use your imagination? Every major Christian organization has "da'wah" centers in every major and minor urban center all over the world. They are funded by trusts funded by big businesses. Shouldn't we do that? I'm convinced half the country would become Muslim in a few years if the effort was done right. Then all the colonists being sent to the moon base in fifty years would be Muslims!

I also envision internal purification of the community. Forget about the "Muslim" world. Forget about it. It's lost for the time being. There will be nothing but turmoil there for years to come. Our locally available resources are stretched so thin. We want to see Islam grow but our own house is not in order. Until we spend the money here, supporting the establishment of permanent Islam in North America, we'll never make any progress.

We also must live together. What do you think will happen if you're the only Muslim household on the block? Are you really that stupid? You will lose your descendants away from Islam if you don't live with other (believing) Muslims, period. Only then can we begin to practice the community life that we often brag about. Let's stop theorizing and start practicing. If you've had bad experiences around other "Muslims" it's because all of us have forgotten how to live as Muslims in a community. Some of us have never had that opportunity to begin with and so the theories remain big talk.

And don't form communities based on ethnic groups, because if you do, you'll fail in the long run. A Muslim community must be based on Islamic teachings. Everyone is welcome and everyone is a part of the brotherhood. If you have racist feelings, confront them by living around the (Muslim) people you looked down on. Then your racist feelings should soften and eventually disappear. I've visited and had extensive contacts with budding Islamic communities in North America and I tell you it is possible, for I've seen it happening here and there. It must happen in more places!

Muslims can gain control of local town councils, enact laws that are in line with Islam, enforce laws against pornography, etc., and set the curriculum in the local public schools. The Orthodox Jews and Catholic Italians have done this in countless places, especially in New York. Many other ethnic and religious groups are doing it too. Muslims must give up the "every man for himself" attitude and make the sacrifices.

A simple goal for every Muslim family could be to make sure that they live within walking distance of a Masjid. That's a start. If you find a Masjid that is run by hypocrites or culturally oriented people who have no spirit to promote the Islamic lifestyle, (and there are many), then either join with like-minded people and establish a real Masjid or move to a place that has a dynamic, friendly and family-oriented Masjid. Many cities and suburbs have multiple Masjids so your search shouldn't be too difficult.

What if there are few real believers around you and moving far is not an option- and even worse, what if the only Masjid in town is built on hypocrisy? Brothers and sisters! Bypass the whole thing. You can run study groups, classes, counseling, family outings, Salat and other activities right from your own homes! An entire network of good families and professional services can be united completely outside the domain of the hypocrite/backward cultural people.

People will know who is real and they will flock to your orbit. Then you may be able to establish a Masjid and school based on Taqwa. Remember, the Blessed Prophet and the believers had to go thirteen years without a proper Masjid in Mecca! You can do it too if you network like they did. Even the Jum'uah can be instituted in someone's basement or home if there is no Masjid nearby or a corrupt one.

My brothers and sisters, I want to see Islam- not "ethnic or cultural" Muslims- but Islam, survive, strengthen and prosper in the coming centuries. Not because I want "my team" to win, but because Islam is the salvation of humanity. It's the reason why we're alive and it's the only thing that our Creator will care that we picked up in this world. It's the only thing that takes an ordinary person and transforms them into the best of Allah's creation. May you live with faith and open your eyes and orient yourselves towards the task ahead. Amin.

http://www.jannah.org/articles/spaceage.html

By Mark LeVine 

FOCUS: OPINION The posters encouraging people to vote for the ban, showed a niqab-wearing Muslim woman [EPA] The images were clearly intended to get out the vote, and judging by the 57 per cent "yes" vote to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland on Sunday, they worked all too well. They included the depiction of minarets piercing through the Swiss flag; minarets on top of the flag, with a menacing, niqab-wearing Muslim woman in the foreground. One could be forgiven for imagining that the Muslims were at the gates of Vienna, or even Lucerne, threatening to overrun Christian Europe. And of course, for the proponents of the ban, that is precisely the situation Europe faces today. For centuries, the peoples of Europe have defined their continental identity against the threat of Islam. So much so that it is hard to imagine a European identity that does not have Islam as its foil. There are, of course, good historical reasons for this. From the eighth century Europe was in fact surrounded by Muslims to the East and South, who ruled much of the Eastern continent for the next millennium. Of course, except in the wildest dreams of jihadists, Europe will not be taken down by Muslim swords today. But for right-wing fear mongers, the contemporary Muslim threat is just as nefarious, only the weapon is different. The ultimate 'other' That Muslim woman in the now infamous poster is not just the ultimate 'other' - totally impenetrable to the Western gaze in a social space where topless women are de rigeur on billboards, magazines, TV commercials and the beach - but, the niqab or burka-wearing Muslim woman is believed to stand for all Muslim women, who, it is assumed, possess little or no control over their own bodies. And because of this, she is as dangerous as the H1N1 virus currently scaring people across the continent. Underneath her niqab lies a human bomb - not a suicide vest, but a baby; lots of babies, if you believe the hype. All these Muslims babies threaten to transform the fundamental identity of Europe as a "Western," "modern," "secular-yet-Christian" space - the very antithesis of what most Europeans imagine Muslims to be. In some sense, of course, the return of a robust Muslim presence in Europe would be a return to history, to a time when a good share of Europe was Muslim. But that is a history few Europeans hearken to. In fact, Europe's first post-Cold War conflict, in the Balkans, was driven in good measure by just this fear. Beneath the fear, however, lies that undeniable reality that the combination in Europe of very low indigenous (meaning white and Christian) birth rates and increasing immigration of Muslims with higher birth rates means that the percentage of Muslims will continue to grow. They will not, however, become a majority in Europe under any conceivable scenario in the coming decades. In fact, the actual demographic trends show a decline in birth rates by Muslim women as they become settled into Europe, which corresponds to the declining birth rates across the Muslim world (many of whose governments have initiated aggressive family planning programmes). Indeed, as Muslim women live in Europe, learn the languages, get educated and join the workforce, they become more "European" - or more accurately, like women globally, who, if they have the resources and freedom to control their reproduction, choose to have smaller families. Of course, if they are marginalised and, along with their male counterparts, not given sufficient chance to become a functioning part of their new societies, this process will happen more slowly, if at all, creating a self-fulfilling cycle of recrimination and disintegration. From Europe to 'Eurabia'? Either way, it is clear that Europe is going to become more Muslim in the coming decades. The question is whether in the process it will become more Islamic - that is, publicly religious and impacted by Muslim religious symbols and practices - and which version of Islam will define the emerging European Islam. Will it be a "Euro-Islam" that respects core liberal values of tolerance, openness and respect for the rule of law, or a "Ghetto Islam" that produces subcultures that are largely isolated and hostile to the European self-image (one which, it must be remembered, largely excludes Muslims in the first place)?   The fear mongers behind the rising tide of Islamophobia in Europe argue that the continent is on the way to becoming "Eurabia" - that is, taken over by a Muslim tide and losing its core Europeanness in the process. It is hard to know how many Europeans buy into this argument. But, while it is rarely a good idea to generalise, the majority would likely prefer Muslims to assimilate into their host societies, to shed the outward appearances of difference, and not integrate - a process that inevitably changes the host culture as well, as it takes on elements of the newer arrival and, inevitably, loses some of its traditions in the process. Picture-postcard Europe It is not surprising that in Switzerland the focus would be on minarets. More than most countries, Switzerland defines itself by its visual aesthetic. It is the picture postcard of Europe, with nothing out of place, the quintessential European destination. Never mind that Swiss Muslims are among the least conservative in Europe and that the call to prayer is already banned in Switzerland; the presence of more minarets would call out to the Swiss, saying: "We are here and we're not going anywhere. And we're not just going to assimilate to your culture. We intend to keep core parts of ours as well." There are just four minarets in Switzerland at present [EPA] Thus the referendum slogans calling for a halt to the "Islamisation of Switzerland". The minaret, as a highly visible sign of Islam's presence, becomes a "spearhead" of that Islamisation, "the symbol of political-societal power claim of Islam" as the website of the Swiss People's Party (SVP), the party behind the vote, describes it. Never mind that most of the claims by the minaret ban's backers about Islam and the demographic threat are inaccurate. Islam, in their view, cannot exist without asserting unique claims to social and ultimately political power, which is why it is an existential threat by its very presence. Muslims cannot just be; they have to convert others, and the voice of the muezzin "proclaiming down from the minaret" is the most powerful manifestation of this. Or so the backers of the minaret ban imagine. Even Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Switzerland's justice minister, admitted that the result "reflects fears among the population of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies," as if one cannot be Islamic without being fundamentalist. This is the underlying problem in the debate over minarets, hijabs, or yet more troubling, attempts by European Muslims to establish separate courts and laws aligned with their interpretation of sharia to cover personal status issues. At best, it says Muslims are willing to integrate, not assimilate into European society.   Comparisons to anti-Semitism   In the aftermath of Sunday's vote, many commentators, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, are comparing Islamophobia in Europe today to the anti-Semitism that plagued the continent in the first half of the 20th century. While understandable, such comparisons miss the fundamental difference between the position of Jews in Europe then and Muslims in Europe today. Jews had lived in Europe for centuries and, despite anti-Jewish sentiments among huge swaths of Europe's population, were very much a part of their societies' cultures, economies, and increasingly politics. Indeed, in Germany it was precisely the increasing full participation of Jews in so many parts of national life that made them such an existential threat. They were Europe's most intimate 'other', inside the very fabric of European identity and increasingly, impossible to tell from "real" Europeans. As such they became a lethal virus that, in the Nazi logic, had to be eradicated to restore the purity of the race. The situation for Muslims today is very different. Muslims are still relatively new to most European societies; at most a couple of generations old. As one Fox news report put it after a riot in Muslim neighbourhoods of the Swedish town of Malmö, they are "outsiders who are already inside" European societies.   What is worrying is that as a new generation of European Muslims come of age and move deeper inside European culture, economies and politics, the fears and prejudices against them will surely grow, especially if, as in Germany of the 1930s, the economic situation continues to deteriorate. Mass violence against Muslims comparable to that visited against Jews is unimaginable. But as Muslims become, welcomed or not, part of the European fabric, the prejudices against them could begin to take on some of the form of the anti-Semitism that plagued pre-war Europe. The larger picture   Ultimately, the vote to ban minarets, like other anti-Islamic legislation, is a symptom of a larger problem within contemporary European societies. It is not just that Europeans are increasingly inhospitable to Muslims and other immigrants. These sentiments reflect the fraying of the social fabric of Europe more broadly, particularly of countries that have had strong recent traditions of social solidarity and welfare. The larger implications have not been touched on in most of the commentary and reporting in the multi-lingual Swiss media, or the European press more broadly. Instead, papers such as the German language Neue Zürcher Zeitung, described the vote as a revolt of "the people over the elites" and emphasised the need for rulers to "listen to the people" (a terminology which, in German at least, has alarming historical connotations). The French language Le Temps questioned: "How can you dialogue when you're crushed by the weight of stereotypes?" The answer is that people are increasingly scared that their social safety nets are fraying and that life is inexorably going to become harder. And they want quick solutions, not long and complicated dialogues. And herein lies the real problem underlying the vote. It is not merely about Islam. It is also about the solidification of neo-liberalism economically and conservatism politically across the continent, and ultimately, about globalisation more broadly. Those in favour of the ban argued minarets represented the Islamification of Europe [AFP] Together, the political, economic and social dynamics are creating a situation in which governments are less able to deliver the high level of services that post-war Europeans have gotten used to, at the moment that ideologically, people are increasingly unwilling to look out for their fellow citizens' welfare as they did previously - when, of course, they also happened to look, speak and act much more like them. Sweden, where I'm currently living, has long had one of Europe's most generous welfare states, which is coming under severe strain just as the Muslim population is growing rapidly. But as a priest who works with immigrants pointed out to me, the unwillingness of Swedes in the wealthy town of Vellinge (to cite one example), to allow a home for child war refugees from Muslim countries in their town owes not merely to a fear or loathing against Muslims. In the "new" and increasingly inegalitarian Sweden, the emerging wealthy class living comfortably in low tax areas like Vellinge are equally unwilling to pay high taxes to support their fellow Swedes.   Of course, it is much easier to blame it on the Muslims and to continue to push them away even as they find their way inside Europe. But if history is any guide, Europeans will start out blaming the 'inside other' for their problems, but it will not be too long before their anger, and violence, turns on each other. Mark LeVine is currently visiting professor at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His most recent books include Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009) and Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine (Rowman Littlefield, 2008). The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.