The Dutch minority government plans to ban Muslim face veils such as burqas and other forms of clothing that cover the face from next year.

The ban would make the Netherlands, where 1 million out of 17 million people are Muslim, the second European Union country to ban the burqa after France, and would apply to face-covering veils if they were worn in public.

The ban will also apply to balaclavas and motorcycle helmets when worn in inappropriate places, such as inside a store, Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters, denying that this was a ban on religious clothing.

Few Muslim women in the Netherlands wear the Arabic-style niqabs which leave the eyes uncovered and Afghan-style burqas that cover the face with a cloth grid. Academics estimate the numbers at between 100 and 400, whereas Muslim headscarves which leave the face exposed are far more common.

The coalition has agreed to submit a new law to parliament next week stipulating that offenders would be fined up to 390 euros ($510), the ministry said.   »»» Brunei News

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that New York police used “terrible judgment” in showing counterterrorism trainees a documentary-style film that says Muslim extremists are masquerading as moderates to destroy America from within.

Bloomberg said police have stopped showing officers “The Third Jihad,” a 72-minute movie that has been branded inflammatory by some Muslim organizations and was produced by a conservative group called the Clarion Fund.

“Somebody exercised some terrible judgment,” he said in Albany, the state capital. “As soon as they found out about it, they stopped it.”

The criticism was unusual for Bloomberg, who in recent months has vigorously defended the police department’s counterterrorism efforts after an Associated Press investigation exposed a secret program to gather intelligence on Muslim neighborhoods.   »»» The Associated Press

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Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. … This is the war you don’t know about.”

This is the feature-length film titled “The Third Jihad,” paid for by a nonprofit group, which was shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.

In January 2011, when news broke that the department had used the film in training, a top police official denied it, then said it had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times” for a few officers.

A year later, police documents obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Law reveal a different reality: “The Third Jihad,” which includes an interview with Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, was shown, according to internal police reports, “on a continuous loop” for between three months and one year of training.

During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.

News that police trainers showed this film so extensively comes as the department wrestles with its relationship with the city’s large Muslim community. The Police Department offers no apology for aggressively spying on Muslim groups and says it has ferreted out terror plots.

But members of the City Council, civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders say the department, in its zeal, has trampled on civil rights, blurred lines between foreign and domestic spying and sown fear among Muslims.

“The department’s response was to deny it and to fight our request for information,” said Faiza Patel, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which obtained the release of the documents through a Freedom of Information request. “The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us.”   »»»  Sailan Muslim (Sri Lanka)

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Objects banal and beautiful have been brought together by the British Museum in an exhibition tracing the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, including priceless manuscripts and textiles, a Victorian Thomas Cook train ticket and blue plastic razors distributed by the Saudi government to all male pilgrims.

The exhibition, which opens on Thursday, is the first in any museum in the world to focus on the pilgrimage, which was already ancient when Muhammad completed his journey in the early 7th century. From 20,000 such travellers in 1932, in one week last year just under three million people undertook the hajj.

As non-Muslims, neither the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, nor the lead curator, Venetia Porter, can ever set foot at the sites or experience the rituals the exhibition describes. “In a way that’s the point of the exhibition,” MacGregor said. “The hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam, and the only one which non-Muslims are not welcomed to observe or share. The purpose of the British Museum when it was founded was to enable its visitors to understand the world better, and this must surely meet that objective.”   »»» The Guardian (U.K.)

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That amputation is a typical punishment for theft in Muslim countries

Of the world’s 50 or so Muslim-majority states, only about half a dozen allow for amputations and at least one of those countries – Pakistan – has never carried out the penalty in practice

That veiling is mandatory under shari’ah law

Women are simply advised by the Qur’an to wear modest clothing and – like men – to lower their eyes and maintain their chastity

That suicide bombing is permissible under sharia law

Most interpreters of the Qur’an understand it to forbid suicide. The first suicide bombing by Muslims was carried out in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war

Stoning is mentioned in the Qur’an

Stoning is not mentioned as a punishment in the Qur’an. It was institutionalized on the basis of hadiths (reports about Muhammad) which were themselves not written down until more than a century after his death and many of which are suspect.

Capital punishment for apostasy is mentioned by the Qur’an

The Qur’an repeatedly warns believers who abandon their faith that they will have to account to God in the afterlife, but it does not provide for their punishment on earth.   »»» The Guardian (U.K.)

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It is not surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood won around 45 percent of vote in the Egyptian parliamentary elections. In fact, we expected them to achieve a landslide victory, based on their reported popularity. The performance of the Salafis was the real surprise. With no experience, no popularity and no political charisma; they won more than quarter of the votes. They won despite being subjected to criticism and ridicule from all sides, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today, the Salafis have around 25 percent of the seats in Egypt’s first free parliament, where no party has won a decisive majority.

Despite competing with them, it seems that the Muslim Brotherhood will in fact benefit most from the emergence of Salafis. The Egyptians, as well as the West, are now obliged to choose one of two religious parties: the elegant Muslim Brotherhood or the “backward”, bearded Salafis.

What is really concerning about the Salafis is not their strict social program, but the possibility of their political change. This reminds us of the Jihadist movements in Afghanistan, where the Salafis merged with the Brotherhood in Afghan camps during the 1980s and 1990s and created a new creature; namely “al-Qaeda”. In the future, the Salafis will become more radical and demanding in the political sphere. They will make demands that the ruler cannot implement, and then call for his exit as a religious duty.

I fear that the less politically aware Salafis might push their movement towards increasingly hard-line positions, in competition with the Muslim Brotherhood. In turn, this will make Salafi politics more radical, which we will see in the Egyptian scene over the next four years.    »»» Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)

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Does the surge of desecration at mosques in Canada represent a new trend or simply the
frustration of an unhappy soul? The evidence suggests that these are isolated incidents and that the Muslims’ interaction with fellow Canadians of other faiths remains largely positive.

In the last two years mosques or construction sites have been vandalized in Gatineau, Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton, Waterloo, and Vancouver. The Outaouais Islamic Center in Gatineau, Quebec, was vandalized twice last week – following two earlier attacks – with attempts to smash windows, set cars on fire and the spraying of hatemessages. Another mosque in Aylmer, Quebec received a letter asking Muslims to leave Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney
condemned these attacks, as did B’nai Brith Canada and the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Quebec
authorities stepped up vigilance and search for the culprits. They had nabbed teenagers for the earlier attacks. »»»Menafn.com

Canadian laws impose stiffer penalties for hate-related violence.

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The Cambridge Digital Library now has online access to some of their Islamic manuscripts.

Cambridge University Library’s collection of Islamic manuscripts dates from the origins of Arabic scholarship in Cambridge in the 1630s when the University founded a Professorship in Arabic and William Bedwell donated a Qur’an to the Library. Since that time the collection has grown in size and diversity to over 5,000 works, including the collections of Thomas Erpenius, J.L.Burckhardt, E.H.Palmer and E.G. Browne. These manuscripts shed light on many aspects of the Islamic world, its beliefs and learning.   »»» tabsir.net

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The British Museum here witnessed on Thursday the installation of one of the oldest known copies of the Holy Qur’an from the 8th century as an exhibit for a major Islamic exhibition.

The British Library has lent the copy of the Holy Qur’an to the British Museum for the exhibition: Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, which is set to open to the public on Jan. 26.

The Ma’il Qur’an is the oldest object to go on public display as part of the British Museum’s major exhibition dedicated to the Haj, the pilgrimage to Makkah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.   »»» Arab News

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The leader of Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram said that recent killings of Christians were justifiable revenge attacks and that President Goodluck Jonathan had no power to stop the group’s insurgency, in the first video of him posted online. The 15 minute video of Abubakar Shekau posted on YouTube is similar in style to messages submitted by other Islamist groups like al Qaeda, a sign of the growing influence other jihadist movements are having on the sect.   »»» Reuters | FaithWorld

Muslims throughout their history never allowed the killing of non-combattants, even in the midst of wars such as the Crusades. There is no respected Islamic scholar anywhere in the Muslim world who would support the attacks of Boko Harm on innocent Christians. The Qur’an gives protected status to Christians who live among Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) has forbidden the destruction of churches. Islam does not condone collective punishment of groups that may have in its midst actual enemies. Only those who perpetrate violence can be dealt with by violent means.

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