# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Conflict is increasing to unprecedented levels here as more cattle herders move south, oftentimes entering farming land. Farmers accuse the Fulani herdsmen of allowing their cattle to trample and eat their crops. Fulani cattle herders accuse the farmers of killing their cattle. There are deep-rooted suspicions between Christian farmers and the Fulani Muslim herdsmen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Not a day passes without certain pundits sharing their newfound "insights" about Islam; "Islam at war", "Islam's war within", or "Islam's inherent violence", etc. These headlines and their derivatives are neither new nor original, and despite being repeated countless times in the West, they remain fashionable.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
February 15, 2017

Far too much of the current U.S. debate over immigration and terrorism is focused on fear, rather than on an effort to understand the forces driving unrest and extremism in Islam and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, or on the data available on the trends involved. The Burke Chair at CSIS has prepared a detailed overview of these trends and the data available in graphic and map form in a report entitled Tracking the Trends and Numbers: Islam, Terrorism, Stability, and Conflict in the Middle East. This analysis is available oat the CSIS web site at https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/170215_MENA_Islam_Terrorism.pdf?UpPJuYw1I6XYXw1d14igmZrCeraXLyXj

The trends involved are complex, and there are many uncertainties and gaps in the numbers. Any survey also necessarily understates the very sharp differences between countries, and a focus on the MENA region necessarily ignores the trends and forces shaping instability and extremism in other parts of the Islamic world like Sub Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asian states like Indonesia and Malaysia.

At the same time, enough data are available to make several key points:
1. The MENA region is a region of instability and unrest. (pp. 7-9)

The MENA region may be a key source of violence and terrorism, but this is only one of many threats in the region, almost all of the violence is contained within the region and consists of Muslims killing Muslims, and the threat of terrorism and extremism is far broader than either ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, or al Qaeda and any of its affiliates.

U.S. strategic partnerships with the governments of MENA states are critical in fighting violence and extremism and deterring threats like Iran. 12 of 17 countries have some form of strategic partnership with U.S.: Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Only Iran and Syria are "hostile."

The threats to stability in the region go far beyond Islamist extremism and affect every nation in the region:

o Morocco and Algeria: Spanish Sahara and Polisario

o Algeria: Islamist unrest and terrorism, human trafficking

o Libya: Civil war and ISIS

o Tunisia: Uncertain stability, some ISIS attacks

o Egypt: Repression, border problems, Islamists, Sinai war Israel vs. Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank, Sinai issues, Hezbollah

o Israel: Gaza, Hezbollah/Lebanon, Syria. Palestinian Authority, Iran, Sinai, US MOU.

o Lebanon: Confessional struggles, Hezbollah vs. Army, border clashes

o Syria: ISIS, Arab civil war, Kurds, Turkey, Iran, U.S., Russia

o Iraq: ISIS, Arab civil war, Kurds, Turkey, Iran, U.S.

o Jordan: Internal tension, refugees, Israel-Palestinian, Syria, Iraq

o Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE: Iran, ISIS/AQAP, Iraq, Syria, Shi'ite vs. Sunni, internal divisions, 40-60% cut in petroleum revenues

o Iran: Arab threat, Baluchi and Arab internal, vs., expanded regional influence, missile, asymmetric sea-air missile, nuclear, Gulf-Gulf of Oman-Indian Ocean

o Yemen: Civil war, Houthi, Saleh, Saudi and UAE, Iran, AQAP, ISIS

o Turkey: Erdogan, Russia, NATO/US/EU, ISIS/Extremism, MENA stability, Kurds, Iran, Afghanistan/Central Asia
2. Islam is a driving force in the MENA region and a rapidly growing force in the world, but polls show that the vast majority of Muslims do not support extremism and violence. (pp. 10-18)

Islam is a driving force in the MENA region and in the world, and one that cannot be isolated, ignored, or treated in ways that create anger and hostility among MENA and the world's Muslims. The number of Muslims in the world already number 1.6 billion and the Pew Trust projects that they will rise by 1.73 billion between 2010 and 2050 -- a gain of 73% in total numbers and 6.5% of the world's population.

The number of Muslims in the Middle East will grow from 341 million to 589 million during this period, but the Pew Trust also projects that Muslims will increase their percentage of the total population by 5.2% in Asia, 5.6% in Sub Saharan Africa, and 4.3% in Europe. These projections do not take full account of the new waves in refugees and illegal immigrants.

Polls show that most Moslems strongly support the role of religion in civil life and Sharia. They also show, however, that they do not support Islamic extremism and Islamic extremist violence. These polling data do, however, have serious gaps and uncertainties.

The sectarian divisions within Islam is another major source of tension and violence. Sectarian tension between Sunni and Shi'ite is not related to extremism, but affects the tension between Iran and much of the Arab world, and has a serious impact on the stability of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

3. A focus on Islam ignores a key issue: the extent to which failed secularism affects the MENA region. (pp. 19-27)

Many of the states in the MENA region have ethnic, tribal, and regional tensions and differences that can be as serious as sectarian divisions and lead to violence that has nothing to do with Islam per se. In practical terms, the level of tension between Kurd, Arab, Iran, and Turkey is now as critical as sectarian differences.

Poor to failed governance at every level is a critical source of internal unrest in many MENA states, and the worst governance correlates closely with the worst instability and violence.

The same is true of corruption, which polls show is a critical factor triggering mass upheavals and alienation from the regime. Transparency International ranks the most corrupt country in the world as being the 176th. Syria is ranked 173rd, Yemen as 170th, 170th, Libya is 170, Iraq as 176th, Lebanon as 136th, Iran as 131st, Egypt as 108th, Morocco as 90th, and Turkey & Kuwait tie at 79th.

Radical differences exist in per capita income, and in development -- matched by equally critical differences in income distribution between rural and urban areas, sects and ethnic groups, and rich and poor. Like other civil problems, poverty and low per capita income correlate closely with the instability and violence.

The population has already grown some 5-6 times through the region between 1950 and 2010, and will probably grow some 70% more by 2015. This has put a major strain ion arable, land and water in a largely desert region, led to hyperurbanization and major slums, strained educational and infrastructure resources, shattered traditional social safety nets in some countries, and led to population movements that have further strained sectarian, ethnic, and tribal tensions.

The region has an extremely young population or "youth bulge" that often has very high levels of direct or disguised unemployment. Some estimates put youth unemployment in Tunisia at 40%.

Investment in education and health has not met the challenge of population growth in many MENA countries.

4. Iran is only one major source of military threats and confrontation in the MENA region, but Iran's potential nuclear, missile, and irregular warfare threats, Iran's naval-missile-air threat to maritime traffic in the Gulf, and Iran's support of violence and unrest in neighboring threats is a warning that no strategy focused on Islamic extremism can deal with the major security and stability threats to the MENA region . (pp. 28-34)
5. Islamic extremism is all too real a threat, but it is only one source of terrorism. Moreover, the current emphasis on ISIL/ISIS/Daesh is grossly out of proportion to its present and problems future impact. (pp. 37-49)

The core Islamic extremist threats extend far beyond the MENA region, ISIL, and Al Qaida.

The Trump choice of seven countries does not begin to reflect the full ranges of threats, and --aside from Iran -- involves countries where the U.S. has governments or non-state actors as strategic partners.

There are many conflicting data bases on terrorism --all with major limits -- and the U.S. has abandoned the effort to issue unclassified official estimates--forcing outside efforts to focus on uncertain media reporting and methods.

The START database is the one used in the U.S. State Department's annual country reports on terrorism, and does provide some good broad indicators of trends for the MENA region, but now only covers terrorism through 2015.

It does show, however, how recent the peak in ISIL/ISIL/Daesh activity has been, and ISIS's reversal in 2016 may well indicate that it may have peaked in 2015-2016, and that other Islamist extremist movements will dominate threat in future years.

A series of charts tracing the global, Islamic, and MENA wide patterns in terrorism from 2005-2015 show that terrorism in largely Islamic regions accounted for some 83% of terrorism during this period.

They also show a major shift in the global patterns of assassinations to Islamic areas.

Only 36% of the terrorist incidents worldwide occurred in the MENA region, but its share increased sharply between 2011ands 2015 -- along with that of South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa.

But, both ISIS and Al Qaida still accounted for only 4,704 Incidents, or 5.9% of the world total, and 16% of the MENA total.

ISIS alone only accounted for 2,867 incidents -- 3.6% of the world total and 9.8% of the MENA total. Even if one looks only at the peak period for ISIS attacks, it accounted for only about 1,200 attacks per year vs. 15,000-18,000 worldwide in 2014 and 2015.

6. There is no real "clash between civilizations." The data show that there is clearly a "clash within a civilization," and that civilization is the Islamic world. The threat within the United States has been minor since 9/11 and has been very limited in Europe. Almost all of the violence caused by Islamic extremism has been directed at fellow Muslims, and much of it has been concentrated in MENA states. (pp 50-63)

The patterns of violence in the MENA region are not dominated by terrorism, but rather by insurgencies, civil wars, and ethnic, sectarian, and tribal conflicts. No reliable data exist to estimate the casualties and costs, but they are at least three orders of magnitude larger than the casualties and costs in Europe and four orders larger than the casualties in the U.S. since 9/11.

An estimate by the Washington Post for January 1, 2015 - July 16, 2016 shows 608 attacks in the U.S. and European combined vs. 28,031 in the rest of the world.

The START data base does not attribute any direct ISIL or Al Qaida attacks or casualties in the U.S. between 2005 and 2015.

ISIL has been far more threatening in Europe in 2016, but this is not shown in the START database. The START database counts a total of 4,835 incidents in Europe between 2005 and 2015. The data base only begins to shows Al Qaida and ISIL incidents in 2014. It only lists 8 for ISIL during 2014-2015, with a total of 5 casualties.

It shows 2,861 for both ISIS and Al Qa'ida in the MENA in 2005-2105, rising sharply in 2012. the number of casualties--the vast majority Muslim -- is far higher.

Some evidence is surfacing of ISIL efforts to trigger attacks in the U.S. and Europe from the outside, but the number of cases so far is very limited.

If one looks at the patterns in U.S. deaths from terrorism during 1995-2014, According to the GTD, 80 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks from 2004 to 2013, including perpetrators and excluding deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, the majority of which are combat-related. Of those 80 Americans killed, 36 were killed in attacks that occurred in the United States.

More broadly, 3,066 Americans have been killed in terrorist attacks from 9/11/2001 through 12/31/2014, including perpetrators and excluding deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. 2,961 of these deaths occurred on American soil but 2,902 of these deaths occurred during the attacks on September 11, 2001.

A separate article in the Washington Post estimated in late January 2017 that about 400 individuals have been charged with or credibly involved in jihad-inspired activity in the U.S. since 9/11. Just under half (197) were U.S.-born citizens, according to research by the non-partisan think tank New America Foundation. Another 82 were naturalized citizens and 44 were permanent residents. Only 11 had non-immigrant visas, 8 were illegal immigrants, and 12 were refugees.

A START estimate through 2014 showed that there were a total of 1,421terrorist attacks. 88.2% were by native born Americans who were not first or second generation immigrants.

206 of the 1,421 (14.5) had some Islamist character. 39.3% of the Islamist attacks were by non-immigrant native Americans, 9.7% were by second generation immigrants, and 51% by first generation immigrants. A maximum of 7.2% were other or unknown.

The number of proposed refugees in the U.S. is very limited, and should be minimal with existing vetting.

7. The battle against Islamic extremism, and for stability in the MENA region, must be fought primarily by the governments of Muslim states. The struggle will be won or lost by U.S. strategic partnerships with states like Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. It will not be won by trying to isolate the U.S. or Europe from Muslims, or by measures that alienate the Islamic world. (pp. 64-68)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tracking the Trends and Numbers: Islam, Terrorism, Stability, and Conflict in the Middle East

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Far too much of the current U.S. debate over immigration and terrorism is focused on fear, rather than on an effort to understand the forces driving unrest and extremism in Islam and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, or on the data available on the trends involved.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cairo, Egypt - "There is no conflict between Islam and science," Zaghloul El-Naggar declares as we sit in the parlor of his villa in Maadi, an affluent suburb of Cairo. "Science is inquisition. It's running after the unknown. Islam encourages seeking knowledge. It's considered an act of worship."

What people call the scientific method, he explains, is really the Islamic method: "All the wealth of knowledge in the world has actually emanated from Muslim civilization. The Prophet Muhammad said to seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. The very first verse came down: 'Read.' You are required to try to know something about your creator through meditation, through analysis, experimentation, and observation."

Author, newspaper columnist, and television personality El-Naggar is also a geologist whom many Egyptians, including a number of his fellow scientists, regard as a leading figure in their community. An expert in the somewhat exotic topic of biostratification - the layering of Earth's crust caused by living organisms - El-Naggar is a member of the Geological Society of London and publishes papers that circulate internationally. But he is also an Islamic fundamentalist, a scientist who views the universe through the lens of the Koran.

Religion is a powerful force throughout the Arab world - but perhaps nowhere more so than here. The common explanation is that the Egyptian people, rich and poor alike, turned to God after everything else failed: the mess of the government's socialist experiment in the 1960s; the downfall of Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab nationalism; the military debacle of the 1967 war with Israel; poverty; inept government - the list goes on.

I witness firsthand the overlapping strands of history as I navigate the chaos of Cairo, a city crammed with 20 million people, a quarter of Egypt's population. In residential neighborhoods, beautiful old buildings crumble, and the people who live in them pile debris onto rooftops because there is no public service to take it away. Downtown, luxury hotels intermingle with casinos, minarets, and even a Pizza Hut. The American University in Cairo is a short distance from Tahrir Square, a wide traffic circle where bruised old vehicles brush pedestrians who make the perilous crossing. At all hours men smoke water pipes in city cafés; any woman in one of these qawas would almost certainly be a foreigner. Most Egyptian women wear a veil, and at the five designated times a day when the muezzins call, commanding the Muslims to pray, the men come, filling the city's mosques.

The Islamic world looms large in the history of science, and there were long periods when Cairo - in Arabic, El Qahira, meaning "the victorious" - was a leading star in the Arabic universe of learning. Islam is in many ways more tolerant of scientific study than is Christian fundamentalism. It does not, for example, argue that the world is only 6,000 years old. Cloning research that does not involve people is becoming more widely accepted. In recent times, though, knowledge in Egypt has waned. And who is accountable for the decline?

El-Naggar has no doubts. "We are not behind because of Islam," he says. "We are behind because of what the Americans and the British have done to us."

The evil West is a common refrain with El-Naggar, who, paradoxically, often appears in a suit and tie, although he is wearing a pale green galabiyya when we meet. He says that he grieves for Western colleagues who spend all their time studying their areas of specialization but neglect their souls; it sets his teeth on edge how the West has "legalized" homosexuality. "You are bringing man far below the level of animals," he laments. "As a scientist, I see the danger coming from the West, not the East."

He hands me three short volumes he has written about the relationship of science and Islam. These include The Geological Concept of Mountains in the Holy Koran, and Treasures in the Sunnah, A Scientific Approach, parts one and two, along with a translation of the Koran, whose title page he has signed, although his name does not appear as a translator.

In Treasures in the Sunnah, El-Naggar interprets holy verses: the hadiths, sayings of the Prophet, and the sunnah, or customs. There are scientific signs in more than one thousand verses of the Koran, according to El-Naggar, and in many sayings of the Prophet, although these signs often do not speak in a direct scientific way. Instead, the verses give man's mind the room to work until it arrives at certain conclusions. A common device of Islamic science is to cite examples of how the Koran anticipated modern science, intuiting hard facts without modern equipment or technology. In Treasures of the Sunnah, El-Naggar quotes scripture: "and each of them (i.e., the moon and the sun) floats along in (its own) orbit." "The Messenger of Allah," El-Naggar writes, "talked about all these cosmic facts in such accurate scientific style at a period of time when people thought that Earth was flat and stationary. This is definitely one of the signs, which testifies to the truthfulness of the message of Muhammad."

Elsewhere, he notes the Prophet's references to "the seven earths"; El-Naggar claims that geologists say that Earth's crust consists of seven zones. In another passage, the Prophet said that there were 360 joints in the body, and other Islamic researchers claim that medical science backs up the figure. Such knowledge, the thinking goes, could only have been given by God.

Critics are quick to point out that Islamic scientists tend to use each other as sources, creating an illusion that the work has been validated by research. The existence of 360 joints, in fact, is not accepted in medical communities; rather, the number varies from person to person, with an average of 307. These days most geologists divide Earth's crust into 15 major zones, or tectonic plates.

El-Naggar even sees moral meaning in the earthquake that triggered the 2005 tsunami and washed away nearly a quarter of a million lives. Plate tectonics and global warming be damned: God had expressed his wrath over the sins of the West. Why, then, had God punished Southeast Asia rather than Los Angeles or the coast of Florida? His answer: Because the lands that were hit had tolerated the immoral behavior of tourists.

The influence and popularity of El-Naggar - as a frequent guest on Arab satellite television, he reaches an audience of millions - does not sit well with Gamal Soltan, a political scientist at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a Cairo-based think tank.

"This tendency to use their knowledge of science to 'prove' that the religious interpretations of life are correct is really corrupting," he tells me. Soltan, who got his doctorate at the University of Northern Illinois, works in a small office that's pungent with tobacco smoke; journals and newspapers lie stacked on his desk and floor. "Their methodology is bad," he says. Soltan explains that Islamic scientists start with a conclusion (the Koran says the body has 360 joints) and then work toward proving that conclusion. To reach the necessary answer they will, in this instance, count things that some orthopedists might not call a joint. "They're sure about everything, about how the universe was created, who created it, and they just need to control nature rather than interpret it," Soltan adds. "But the driving force behind any scientific pursuit is that the truth is still out there."

Researchers who don't agree with Islamic thinking "avoid questions or research agendas" that could put them in opposition to authorities - thus steering clear of intellectual debate. In other words, if you are a scientist who is not an Islamic extremist, you simply direct your work toward what is useful. Scientists who contradict the Koran "would have to keep a low profile." When pressed for examples, Soltan does not elaborate.

The emphasis on utility wasn't always present here. The Napoleonic occupation from 1798 to 1801 brought French scientists to Egypt. The arrival of the Europeans alerted Egyptians to how far behind they'd fallen; that shock set in motion a long intellectual awakening. During the 150 years that followed, institutions for higher learning in Cairo gave the city an international reputation for prestigious institutions, and the exchange of scholars went in both directions, with Egyptians going west and Americans and Europeans coming here.

Then came the 1952 coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser that toppled King Farouk I. Nasser was the first modern leader to position himself as a spokesman for the whole Arab world. His brand of nationalism was meant to unify all Arab people, not just Egyptians, and it set them in opposition to America and Europe. "After Nasser, Arab nationalism raised suspicions about the West," Soltan says.

In Soltan's view, the twin forces of Islamization and government policy have inadvertently worked together to blunt scientific curiosity. "We are in a period of transition," he says. "I think we are going to be in transition for a long time."

People and the authorities are still grappling with religion's place in Egyptian society, resulting in a situation similar to one in Europe during the time of Copernicus and Galileo, when scientific knowledge was considered threatening to the prevailing religious power structure. For now, the door on freedom of thought has nearly been shut. As Soltan points out, "Cairo University has not received Western professors since the 1950s, and because of the turmoil in the country, many professors who didn't like the regime were excluded from the university."

I walk the campus of Cairo University prior to meeting Waheed Badawy, a chemistry professor who has taught there since 1967. His students, male and female, wander in and out during our talk; the women all wear head covers, highlighting the degree to which religion is particularly strong among the young. He wears a white lab coat, and there are religious verses posted on his laboratory walls and corkboard. Yet Badawy, who specialized in solar energy conversion while working for Siemens in Germany in the 1980s, does not consider himself an "Islamic scientist" like El-Naggar. He is a scientist who happens to be devout, one who sees science and religion as discrete pursuits.

"Islam has no problems with science," he says. "As long as what you do does not harm people, it is permitted. You can study what you want, you can say what you want."

What about, say, evolutionary biology or Darwinism? I ask. (Evolution is taught in Egyptian schools, although it is banned in Saudi Arabia and Sudan.) "If you are asking if Adam came from a monkey, no," Badawy responds. "Man did not come from a monkey. If I am religious, if I agree with Islam, then I have to respect all of the ideas of Islam. And one of these ideas is the creation of the human from Adam and Eve. If I am a scientist, I have to believe that."

But from the point of view of a scientist, is it not just a story? I ask. He tells me that if I were writing an article saying that Adam and Eve is a big lie, it will not be accepted until I can prove it.

"Nobody can just write what he thinks without proof. But we have real proof that the story of Adam as the first man is true."

"What proof?"

He looks at me with disbelief: "It's written in the Koran."

Tunis, Tunisia: After the hazy congestion of Cairo, the briny sea breeze and open spaces of Tuni s are liberating. Anchored on the Mediterranean coast, Tunisia's capital is rimmed by mountainous suburbs with palm trees and gardens trellised with bougainvillea. The town where I am staying is Sidi Bou Said. It has a kind of high-rent antiquity that feels like Italy or the south of France. Indeed, just 80 miles from Sicily, Tunis is physically closer - and culturally closer, too, many people say - to Mediterranean Europe than it is to much of the rest of the Arab world. "They're not really Arabs," my Egyptian translator says en route to the airport. "They're French." He does not mean it as a compliment.

"We have succeeded in keeping extremism and that mentality out of our schools and institutions," says a government official who asks not to be named. "We are an island of 10 million people in a sea of Islamists. The extremists want to remove the buffer between religion and everything else, including science. There has to be a buffer between religion and science."

Tunisia, a former French protectorate that became independent in 1956, shares with its Arab neighbors a poor human rights record and a president whose family has been charged with corruption. Freedom House, a nonprofit monitoring group, ranks it 179 out of 195 countries for press freedom. In March, a dissident was sentenced to three and a half years in prison (after already serving two years while awaiting trial) for decrying the lack of freedom. Yet, unlike the Egyptians who complain openly about their lack of freedom, the Tunisians I encounter tend to put things in a more optimistic light. One reason for the allegiance to their government is a widely held belief that the alternative to their president, Ben Ali, would be Islamic extremists. Another reason many support the government: It has been more effective than those of most Arab countries at delivering basic services, including education and health care.

Although officially Muslim, Tunisia maintains the closest thing there is in the Arab world to separation of mosque and state. In public sector jobs, beards and veils are banned. On the street, you see young women with their hair covered, but it is not unusual to see the same women wearing tight jeans, making the veil as much fashion accessory as religious garment. School textbooks lack information on different religions and religious beliefs. "Islamic science" is not a university subject here, as it is in Egypt; "Islamology," which looks critically at Islamic extremism, is.

In contrast to the situation in Egypt, where even the most Western-oriented scientist I talked to at some point or other declares himself to be "a good Muslim," in Tunisia the personal religious views of scientists I meet hardly seem relevant. Even so, I am reminded how science, like politics, tends to be local, addressing immediate problems using materials at hand. Sami Sayadi, director of the bioprocesses lab at the Biotechnology Center of Sfax, Tunisia's second-largest city, spent more than a decade figuring out how to turn the waste of olives pressed for oil into clean, renewable energy. Olives have been a major export here since the heyday of Carthage and remain an icon for Arabs everywhere, making Sayadi's achievement sound almost like modern-day alchemy.

Sayadi's thinking is the kind of pragmatism the Tunisian government wants, and in recent years it has come to see science and technology as important tools of national advancement. There were 139 laboratories across different disciplines in 2005, compared with 55 in 1999. The government is actively promoting this growth.

Ninety minutes south of Tunis is the Borj-Cedria Science and Technology Park, a campus that will eventually combine an educational facility, an industrial and R&D center, and a business incubator. The park's completion is still years away, however, and although some buildings and labs are in place, geologists, physicists, and other scientists laboring here work with equipment that in the West wouldn't pass muster in many high schools. They pursue projects for the love of science.

The situation may soon change. In its hunger for patents and profits, the Tunisian government is giving out four-year contracts to labs whose work has industrial applications. Senior researchers at Borj-Cedria currently make about $1,100 a month (a livable but modest wage here), but the new program would give anyone who earns a patent a 50 percent stake in royalties.

Still, Tunisia's support of science has clear limits: Projects whose aim is solely to advance knowledge get no support. "Everyone would like to do [basic] research," says Taieb Hadhri, Minister of Scientific Research, Technology, and Competency Development, who has held the cabinet-level post since the department was created in 2004. "I'm a mathematician by training, and I would also like to do [basic] research. But that will have to come later. We have more pressing needs now."

And the push toward advancement here is not entirely free from the pull of tradition, as I learn when I visit Habiba Bouhamed Chaabouni, a medical geneticist who splits her time between research and teaching at the Medical Faculty of the University of Tunis and seeing patients at the Charles Nicolle Hospital, also in the capital. In 2006, she won a L'Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Award, a $100,000 prize given to five women, each representing one of the continents, for her work analyzing and preventing hereditary disorders. When she greets me in her office, she is wearing a white lab coat. Test tubes clink as they spin in a centrifuge to separate strands of a patient's DNA that Chaabouni will examine later.

Chaabouni recalls the early days of her career, in the mid-1970s, when she saw children afflicted with disfiguring diseases. "It was very sad," she says. "I met families with two, three, four affected siblings. I wanted to do something about it, to know how to prevent it." There was no facility for genetic research at that time, and for two decades, she lobbied government officials hard for it. "We wanted better conditions and facilities. They also saw we were publishing in international [peer-reviewed] journals. I think the policymakers finally understood the value of developing research."

The Tunisian medical-genetics community, which includes about 100 doctors and technicians, now publishes more than any other Arab country. "We looked on PubMed, and we're ahead of Egypt," Chaabouni says, beaming. "Not by a lot, but remember, we're one-tenth the size."

Over the last 30 years, Chaabouni has also seen how people who once resisted her message have begun listening. Once, genetic counseling or even coming in for certain treatments almost amounted to a social taboo; now, it is becoming more accepted, and things that were once simply ignored or not spoken of - such as autism in children, which is being identified more commonly - are more often out in the open.

For all that, Chaabouni still sees how her advice sometimes clashes with her patients' beliefs. Like many Arab and Muslim countries, Tunisia has a high incidence of congenital diseases, including adrenal and blood disorders, that Chaabouni has traced to consanguinity.

"It's a custom here, and in the rest of the Arab world, to marry cousins, even first cousins," she tells me, though the practice is becoming less common. "Of course, that means they share a lot of genes from common sets of grandparents."

In other fields, pure research does not get support; in medical genetics, even practically applicable knowledge can spark conflicts with Islamic culture. "Taking a blood sample to study abnormalities is not a problem," Chaabouni says. "That's just investigation. The problem is when you take the results of research into the clinic and try to give genetic counseling to patients. Then you have people who won't accept the idea that they have to stop having children or that they shouldn't marry their cousin."

Today prenatal screening and genetic testing is more widely accepted, and when it's necessary to save the mother's life, doctors terminate pregnancies. Islamic law permits abortion in cases of medical necessity (where the mother's life is in jeopardy) until 120 days in utero, at which point it regards the fetus as "ensouled" and abortion becomes homicide. For Chaabouni, the challenge is mainly one of communication. "They look for arguments why you may be wrong," she says. "They go to other doctors. In the end, they usually follow our advice, but it's hard because you're giving them bad news that may also go against what they believe."

Mohammed Haddad, an Islamology specialist at the Université de la Manouba in Tunis, points out the many little assaults that can turn people's minds against scientific advances. For example, a sheikh recently declared that he'd found a cure for AIDS-spelled out in the Koran. "He was from Yemen, but they reach us by satellite, and it's all a big business," Haddad says. "People listen, and it's a problem. In this situation, many will die."

Amman, Jordan: "The Koran says, 'Read,' but it does not even say 'Read the Koran.' Just 'Read,'" says Prince El Hassan bin Talal, who greets me at the Royal Scientific Society, Jordan's largest research institution - one that he helped establish in 1970. Hassan was heir to the throne until his brother, King Hussein, bypassed him in favor of Abdullah, Hussein's own son. The 60-year-old prince, who speaks classical Arabic and Oxford English and has studied biblical Hebrew, can tick off a whole list of things that are wrong with Jordan, from Western governments and nongovernmental organizations that come proposing solutions without having identified the causes of problems, to a culture that does not value reading. He is bookish himself; during our 40-minute-plus interview, he refers to Kierkegaard, Karen Armstrong's A History of God, and What Price Tolerance, a 1939 book by his wife's relative Syud Hossain.

He is also candid, calling suicide bombers "social rejects" and questioning the validity of those who would take the Muslim world back to the times of the Prophet Muhammad. "Are we talking Islam or Islamism?" he asks, pointing out the difference between the religion and those extremists who use the religion to advance their own agendas. "The danger [posed by Islamists] is not only to Christians but also to Islam itself. The real problem is not the Arab-Israel issue but the rise of Islamism."

Science, rather than religion, is the way to ensure a country's future, Prince Hassan believes, and he has made supporting scientific achievement a personal mission for almost 40 years. He envisions projects that would promote regional partnerships, including with Israel - an idea that, despite official peace between the countries, remains controversial.

He notes that some important science initiatives are under way. One of the Royal Scientific Society's pursuits is the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation, or TREC, a multinational effort that would use wind, water, geothermal, and solar resources to provide renewable energy from Oman to Iceland. If successful, the endeavor would take decades to be realized. Like Moses standing on Mount Nebo (in fact, the site of the Exodus story lies just about 20 minutes outside Amman), the 60-year-old Hassan knows that he is not likely to see this technological promised land himself.

"Vision," he says, "is not an individual thing. It's a collaboration."

"The biggest disaster in the region, I am sorry to say, is the loss of brainpower," admits Hassan. The emigration of trained academics plagues the entire Arab world, and half of those students who graduate from foreign universities never return to the Arab states. "A large percentage of [America's] NASA staff are of Middle Eastern origin," Hassan notes.

In some ways, the brain drain in Jordan is more obvious than in Egypt because resources here are stretched to the breaking point. Conservative estimates put the number of Iraqi refugees living in Jordan at 700,000 - an enormous burden considering that Jordan has just 6 million citizens. To put that figure in perspective, imagine the United States adding 35 million people in a period of four years.

The population influx has triggered inflation, soaring rents and property prices, and urban sprawl. Like Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria (and like Israel, for that matter), Jordan lacks significant natural resources; the country has little oil or fresh water. In fact, since most of the water from the Jordan River's tributaries has been diverted and no longer flows to the Dead Sea, even the Dead Sea is dying. There are plans for resuscitating it, but they will require a delicate process of regional cooperation, including the Israelis and the Palestinians, and most likely Western aid.

Jordan also lacks financial resources, unlike the oil-rich Gulf states that can afford to treat knowledge and expertise as an accessible commodity, able to be imported as needed. Furthermore, the perception of danger - terrorists bombed three hotels in Amman in 2005, and Al Qaeda has admitted to killing an American diplomat-has all but shut the valve on Jordanian tourism and the considerable revenue it used to bring.

Jordan, the quip goes, is caught between Iraq and a hard place. For now, it embodies many of the issues that the Arab Human Development Report blamed for the region's intellectual malaise, among them lack of freedom and dysfunctional, authoritarian governments whose security services have too much say; the triumph of who-you-know advancement over merit-based promotion; and poor communication between researchers within the region. Educational opportunities are limited, especially for girls and women. All of this means that if you are a talented scientist, there is a good chance you'll leave.

"Science needs stability, democracy, freedom of expression," says Senator Adnan Badran, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Michigan State University, as we drink Turkish coffee at his office. "You must have an environment that's conducive to free thinking, to inquiry. If you don't, you'll never be able to release the mind's potential. It's a very bleak story, a very disappointing story, about the state of science and technology in the Arab region."

He blames a tradition that began with the Ottomans in the 1500s: lowering educational standards and promoting dogma. "We were open. Islam was open, a strong belief with dialogue. It was tolerant, mixing with other civilizations. Then we shifted to being dogmatic. Once you're dogmatic, you are boxed in," he says. "If you step outside the box, you're marginalized - and then you're out. So you go west."

That's what Badran did, spending 20 years in France and the United States, where he earned four patents doing research for the United Fruit Company. His work, which focused on retarding ripeness in bananas, has had huge economic impact - billions of dollars, potentially, because it allows the company to ship its crops around the world without spoiling.

Even so, Badran returned home to Jordan, where he took up academic positions, including the presidency of Philadelphia University in Amman. In 1987, he was made the first secretary general of Jordan's Higher Council for Science and Technology and was later appointed to the senate by the king of Jordan, Abdullah II. Then early in 2005, the king appointed Badran prime minister, the first scientist to hold that position. The king, who was educated at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and at Oxford in the United Kingdom, and also attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., appreciated Badran's position on the need for Arab glasnost.

"I wanted to destroy every vested interest, to get rid of cronyism, to build accountability and transparency by freeing the press," Badran says. The circumstances of Badran's term were difficult, however. "He was an excellent academic and scientist," a journalist tells me, "but an ineffective politician."

Any chance for Badran to advance his agenda went up with the smoke in November 2005 when suicide bombers targeted the three Amman hotels. As the government shifted its focus from internal reform to security, Badran was a casualty of change. The prime minister here serves at the discretion of the king - and also, many people say, by tacit approval of Jordan's security services. In less than a year, Badran was ousted (his thinking was considered to be too idealistic for that time) and returned to his seat in the senate.

After leaving Badran, I get a primer on Jordan's most dynamic and hopeful scientific collaboration. I speak with physicist Hamed Tarawneh at his cramped, dingy temporary office at UNESCO's headquarters in Amman. Tarawneh, a tall, broad-shouldered chain-smoker with a disarming smile, left years ago to get his Ph.D. in Sweden and returned to Jordan just a few months prior to our meeting. He is in the process of assembling a staff of engineers and technicians for SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), an international laboratory organized around a machine that has wide applications in physics, biology, medicine, and archaeology. Only a handful of these versatile light generators exist, and this is the first in the Muslim world.

Jordan was selected as the site for SESAME after King Abdullah II donated land and ponied up $10 million for the facility that would house the synchrotron. The project is modeled on CERN, the Swiss high-energy physics lab formed after World War II to restore Europe's tradition of scientific learning. When SESAME becomes fully operational in 2009 - the facility at Al-Balqa Applied University near Amman should be complete this June - researchers will rotate through doing their work in weeks-long sessions. Like its European model, SESAME was conceived in part to motivate the region's best and brightest to stay, or even to return from abroad; the laboratory should also create excitement and opportunity that will attract young students to science.

Tarawneh hopes SESAME will become a knowledge hub for the member states that pay annual dues, a group that now includes Bahrain, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority - and Israel, the one country in the region that has a knowledge-based society but has been excluded from almost every other endeavor. "We are scientists," Tarawneh says. "We don't care about politics. So now we have a chance to discuss science here and work for the greater good of knowledge. It's a very good start. It's a cosmopolitan environment, which is what we've been lacking. Now we'll all know each other as scientists, as people."

I ask about the legions of scientists who have left Jordan, who regard it as a lost cause.

"Would I earn more if I went to Berkeley?" Tarawneh asks. "Yes, of course. But I am from here. I am an Arab. I am a Muslim. This is where I want to be. And why can't we build something here that's ours? In five years, others will see it's useful, and it will become a world effort and create a culture of scientific inquiry here. Science is the way to break barriers. It's about development and advancing people's interests."

Tarawneh's enthusiasm makes SESAME's success seem inevitable, but the king's support and the international character of the project make it seem like much more than an individual triumph. It is precisely the kind of regional partnership that people like Prince Hassan say is the real road map to peace and prosperity in the Islamic world. As both machine and metaphor, a high-powered generator that shines light on scientific inquiry may be the answer to everyone's prayers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cairo, Egypt - "There is no conflict between Islam and science," Zaghloul El-Naggar declares as we sit in the parlor of his villa in Maadi, an affluent suburb of Cairo. "Science is inquisition. It's running after the unknown. Islam encourages seeking knowledge. It's considered an act of worship."

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/opinion/i-think-islam-hates-us.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Editorial

Image

Credit Credit Tyler Comrie

Eradicating "radical Islamic terrorism" from the face of the earth has been President Trump's mantra, first in the campaign, then in his Inaugural Address and remarks a day later to the C.I.A.

No one would argue with fighting back against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and other terrorist groups that threaten the United States, Europe, the Middle East and beyond. For eight years, President Barack Obama did just that, using a multilayered approach that included launching thousands of air and drone strikes in at least a half dozen countries and killing countless militants, among them Osama bin Laden. While Mr. Obama made significant progress in degrading this threat - the Islamic State has lost considerable territory in both Iraq and Syria - he did not put an end to violent extremism. Mr. Trump is now pledging to do more and better.

The problem is that his approach, as we know it, is more likely to further inflame anti-American sentiment around the world than to make the United States safer. Mr. Trump has not explained how he would destroy the terrorist danger. But his use of slogans like "radical Islam," which echo the views of his closest advisers, implies a naïve reading of the threat from about 40,000 extremists, while demonizing and alienating many of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims.

The emerging details suggest that Mr. Trump's plans to eradicate violent extremists are not only at odds with Mr. Obama's; they trample on American values and international law. It was reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was planning to block Syrians and others from "terror prone" nations from entering the United States, at least temporarily, even though Washington already vets visitors from such countries. While people from Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Iraq would be blocked by a monthlong ban, Mr. Trump appears, inexplicably, to be exempting Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 extremists who hijacked the planes on Sept. 11. Refugee admissions would be halted for 120 days while screening procedures are reviewed, with the number allowed in cut from 110,000 to 50,000.

Another draft executive order would allow the C.I.A. to revive the once-secret program under which terrorism suspects were interrogated in "black site" prisons overseas, which were shut down by Mr. Obama in 2009. The order would also re-examine the use of torture, which was widely condemned in the Bush era and is opposed by Mr. Trump's own defense secretary.

Mr. Trump would also keep open the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which Mr. Obama tried to close, and reportedly is considering designating the Muslim Brotherhood, which is involved in Muslim politics in a number of countries, as a terrorist organization. Some experts see the move as a chance for the Trump administration to limit Muslim political activity in the United States. But since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO ally, sympathizes with the Muslim Brotherhood, such a step would further complicate that fraught alliance.

Taken together, Mr. Trump's plans would damage America's credibility as guardian of human rights, anger allies and undermine civil liberties at home. They will also inspire fear in law-abiding Muslims everywhere, but especially those in America, whose help is crucial to identifying and pre-empting young people tempted by extremism.

At the C.I.A. meeting, Mr. Trump hinted at a yet more radical step. During the campaign, he often lamented that America did not take possession of Iraq's oil after the 2003 invasion. On Saturday, he went further and said "maybe we'll have another chance," suggesting he may be considering another invasion to seize Iraq's oil, a violation of international law. Such a move, against an ally no less, could incite extremist attacks against the United States. Mr. Trump seemed not to realize that ISIS gets most of its oil revenue from Syria.

To understand Mr. Trump's thinking, one might look to his national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, author of the book "The Field of Fight." Mr. Flynn was fired from his job as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Obama administration. He has trafficked in fake news and been part of the world of conspiracy theorists who trade in fantasies that Shariah law is being imposed on Americans.

A fearful tone permeates Mr. Flynn's book, which warns, "We're in a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people, most of them inspired by a totalitarian ideology: Radical Islam." For Mr. Flynn and fellow radicals, the fight isn't against a small number of religious fanatics who seek to attack the West and its Arab allies, but an entire religion.

Mr. Obama and former President George W. Bush generally agreed that terrorists had perverted the teachings of Islam, not that Islam was the problem. For them and most national security experts, containing terrorism meant focusing on individuals and groups that were intent on doing harm to America - namely Al Qaeda and groups like ISIS - while not turning all Muslims into the enemy.

Not so Mr. Trump, who said last year, "I think Islam hates us," and Mr. Flynn, who has decried Islamism as a "vicious cancer." Both Mr. Flynn and Sebastian Gorka, the national security editor at the alt-right website Breitbart News, who may be considered for a position in the Trump administration as a counterterrorism adviser and wrote a book titled "Defeating Jihad," characterize "radical Islam" to be as grave a threat as Hitler in World War II and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

In his book, Mr. Flynn labels as extremist enemies a wide range of groups, including not just Sunni Muslim groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda, but countless others and many countries, like North Korea, Shiite-majority Iran, China, Syria, Venezuela and Russia. Mr. Flynn seems to be advocating a shotgun approach toward a target that requires precision.

Mr. Flynn also hints that the battlefield could expand beyond current conflicts in the Middle East, writing that "we must engage the violent Islamists wherever they are" and promising "severe consequences" for Saudi Arabia and other countries if they continue aiding terrorist groups. He is especially alarmed about Iran and argues that Washington "should consider how to change Iran from within."

The president has a responsibility to defend the country against extremist threats, but the ideas of Mr. Flynn and others, if adopted, seem like a recipe for endless world war. It is especially hard to see how destabilizing Iran, one of the few intact countries in the Middle East, would advance American interests at a time the region is in chaos.

The United States undoubtedly must find more effective ways to defeat terrorists, including by undermining their message. If Mr. Trump can do that, it will be to his credit. But to a great extent success will depend on long-term cooperation from Muslim leaders and allies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editorial Eradicating "radical Islamic terrorism" from the face of the earth has been President Trump's mantra, first in the campaign, then in his Inaugural Address and remarks a day later to the C.I.A. No one would argue with fighting back against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and other terrorist groups that threaten the United States, Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

# data[].attributes.body
http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-11

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Historical Perspective

With the inception of Islam in the 7th century ce the earliest community of Muslims saw itself in continuity with Jews and Christians. The Qur'an refers to many of the prophets detailed in the Hebrew Bible and clarifies that Muhammad is to be the last in the long prophetic line. Next in importance to Muhammad in this lineage is Jesus, who in the Qur'an is specifically not the son of God and not in any way divine. Political resistance to the Prophet Muhammad created a series of conflicts resulting in the crystallization of Islam into its own separate religion and identity. Theological differences were articulated early and have continued throughout history to present major challenges to interfaith relationships.

A combination of factors led to the rapid spread of Islam after the Prophet's death in 732 ce. The Persian Sassanian and the Greek Byzantine Empires were exhausted after many years of struggle, and Islam was able to occupy what amounted to a power vacuum in many of the areas to which it spread. Military expeditions were political in nature and not undertaken for the purpose of forcing conversion to Islam. Christians and Jews were given "dhimmi" status, paying a poll tax for their protection. Dhimmis had the right to practice their religion in private and to govern their own communities. Special dress was required and new church buildings could not be constructed. The Christian church as a whole was divided into five apostolic sects at the beginning of Islam, located in Rome, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. The resulting sectarian divisions had significant consequences for the spread of Islam. Many oriental Christians actually welcomed Muslim political authority as a relief from Byzantine oversight, and they cooperated with their new Muslim rulers.

Within the Islamic community early attitudes of seeming tolerance and even appreciation of Christians and Jews soon gave way to more narrow interpretations of the Qur'an and Islamic law, resulting in growing intolerance. From the beginning Christians were nervous about the growth of a new religion that they saw as a Christian heresy and which invaded and took over many of their lands.

Certain periods in world history reflected harmonious interactions among the three Abrahamic faiths. Medieval Andalusia, for example, provided a venue for Muslims and Christians, along with Jews, to live in proximity and even mutual appreciation. It was a time of great opulence and achievement, and social intercourse at the upper levels was easy. It was also a period during which a number of Christians chose to convert to Islam. Medieval Andalusia has often been cited as an ideal place and time of interfaith harmony. To some extent that claim may be justified. If so, however, it was fairly short and was soon supplanted by the tensions, prejudices, and ill treatment of minorities by both Muslims and Christians that more often have characterized relationships between the communities. By the 10th century the Iberian Peninsula was characterized by hostilities between the Christian kingdom of León in the north and the considerably larger Muslim al-Andalus in the south.

Other encounters, such as those experienced through the centuries of the Crusades, have left both Christians and Muslims bitter and angry. The question of sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem remained an ongoing issue. Considered the Holy City by Christians, Jerusalem from Islam's beginning was also a place greatly venerated by Muslims, and it quickly came under Muslim sovereignty. Many complex factors went into the call of Pope Urban II for a crusade against Muslims in 1095, primary among them the recapture of Jerusalem for Christianity. Religious zeal carried Christian forces well into Muslim territories, and early efforts actually led to the capture of the prize of Jerusalem, which they held for some years. Western Christians, generally ignorant of the lands of the East, whether Christian or Muslim, vented their ire against their Eastern Christian brethren almost as much as toward Muslims. The two centuries in which Christians occupied Palestine witnessed a constant pattern of shifting alliances. The Crusades lasted for several centuries, ending finally in victory for Islam.

By the close of the Middle Ages hostilities between Islam and Western Christendom once again were intense, with active warfare for several centuries. A number of events served as a kind of transition from the Middle Ages to a new era of international engagement. The fall of Constantinople in the middle of the 15th century and the final expulsion of Muslims from Andalusia at the end of that century illustrate this transition. For some eleven centuries Constantinople had stood as the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Its fall to the invading Turks in 1453 signaled a dramatic change in the power relationships between Islam and Christendom. The specter of a Muslim takeover of all of Europe was raised anew.

In the 15th and succeeding centuries Muslim navies roamed the Mediterranean, attacking European ships and coastal towns. Raids were carried out as far north as England and Ireland. Muslim fortunes, however, were reversed in Spain, where, after centuries of glory, they suffered a steady loss of territories under the Christian Reconquista. Initially under Christian rule Muslims were the recipients of a policy of toleration. Gradually, however, the two communities became completely segregated, and a rising tide of anti-Semitism had consequences for both Muslims and Jews. The struggle for sectarian control ended with the union of the Spanish kingdoms under Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. By the turn of the 15th century Muslims in Spain had to choose between conversion, emigration, or death.

Yet, another shift in relations soon set in. The rise of rationalism, a fascination on the part of the West with the cultural trappings of the East, and the necessities of international political and economic exchange soon drew the worlds of Islam and Christendom closer together. At the same time, under the influence of Western missionary agencies, a very negative perception of Islam continued to develop in Europe. For a long period Western scholarly research on Islam was dominated by the desire to convert Muslims to Christianity, resulting in analyses of Islam that were apologetic and highly polemical. It is only in the 20th century that more objective scholarship has emerged, especially efforts launched following the publication of Edward Said's epic Orientalism.

Before leaving the historical context it is important to note some of the nonmilitary, cultural, and intellectual ways in which East and West encountered each other. Much has been made of the interchange between the Crusaders and the Arabs. In some cases each side found in the other chivalry and respect worthy of admiration and even emulation. For the most part, however, European thinking had little influence on Arab culture. Conversely, the West found great benefit from early Islamic thought in the fields of culture and science. In fact, it discovered that in the Islamic world the concept of divine unity led to an understanding that the arts and sciences, as we would call them today, are but different dimensions of the unified study of God's many-faceted world. Westerners learned from their encounters with Islamic civilizations in all major scholarly and scientific fields, including philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, and mathematics as well as the arts and music. It is well known that ancient Greek philosophy and science came to the West through the medium of Arab translation. Arab-Islamic medical science had a great influence on the development of the disciplines of medicine in Europe.

Unfortunately, since the Middle Ages it has been politics that has dominated thinking on both sides, and a legacy of confrontation, distrust, and misunderstanding has prevailed until the present day. Anti-Islamic stereotypes in both Europe and America today reflect early vitriolic sentiments expressed by ignorant and uninformed Christians aghast at the rise of Islam and by their descendants who suffered defeat by Muslims in the Crusades and beyond.

Christian-Muslim Relations in the Early 21st Century

The Ottoman Empire, at its height during the 16th and 17th centuries under Suleiman the Magnificent, suffered gradual decline in succeeding centuries, culminating in its defeat as an ally of Imperial Germany during World War I. Having already lost most of its European territories before the war, the empire suffered a breakup into what is now Turkey and the countries of the Middle East, whose boundaries were drawn by the victorious Western allies. It was also at this time that the seeds were sown for the establishment of the state of Israel in the heart of the Middle East, with statehood emerging in 1948. These events of the first half of the 20th century were pivotal for determining the subsequent relations between Muslims and the West (Christians and Jews, and now secularists).

Meanwhile in other parts of the Muslim world, especially Africa and South Asia, colonialists wreaked havoc, supplanting Islamic educational systems with secular or Christianity-based systems. By 1900 more than 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa was already under European control. Native peoples often were treated as "savages" who were to be educated to conform to the customs of the West. Inhumane behavior has never been limited to either Christians or Muslims. Turkey during and after World War I carried out one of the worst genocides in history with the massacre of more than 1 million Armenians.

Muslim-Christian relations in Europe today are inevitably affected by centuries-old fears of Islamic violence. These fears, of course, are exacerbated by the terrorist events that have occurred in various parts of the world since the turn of the 21st century. Concern over the rising tide of immigrants coming into Europe from various parts of the Muslim world also has served to raise European nervousness about the presence of Islam. Today some 70 percent of all refugees in the world are Muslim. On the psychological level fear and mistrust tap into a long history of mutual aggression. On the practical level, Europeans fear that they will lose jobs, a fair cut of social services, and the cultural integrity of their respective countries.

For their part many Muslims are experiencing what they see as a new form of international colonialism. Muslim countries in the developing world often are controlled by Western powers through means such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the UN Security Council. The West has long been known for supporting corrupt dictators so as to foster its own economic needs. Muslims, not surprisingly, question the sincerity of Western belief in justice and democracy.

Selected areas of the world are highlighted in the following subsections as examples of the problems that bear on Christian-Muslim relations.

Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa

Many areas of Africa, of course, are suffering greatly today as a result of deteriorating conditions and relations between Muslim and Christian groups. One obvious example is Nigeria. Since 1990 conflicts between Muslims and Christians in northern Nigeria have become violent and often deadly. The full picture is complex and related directly to the British colonialist venture in Nigeria. Thus, relations between the two communities are based not only on religion, but also more specifically are a combination of economic, political, and religious factors.

The British captured the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903, after which it became known as the Northern Protectorate, which, in 1960, became part of the independent Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Hausa-Fulani, the dominant leadership, were Muslim, and the ethnic minorities were primarily Christian. This racial-ethnic divide remains as the major identifier of groups today, even though issues of conflict may have nothing specifically to do with religion. Interfaith conflict in Nigeria in the contemporary period took a more serious turn when, in 1991, some Muslims objected to Christian evangelization efforts and fighting broke out. These troubles have continued regularly, often with orgies of killing and looting, much of it unrelated to religion or ethnicity. For Muslims themselves, violence among members of the faith may be of greater consequence than struggles between groups representing Islam and Christianity.

Today a major player in exacerbating Nigerian sectarian violence is the Muslim sect called Boko Haram, which is strongly opposed to Western values and forms of education and generally shares a Taliban ideology. In recent years, members of Boko Haram have raided schools, churches, and government offices in their fight to carve out an Islamic enclave in northeastern Nigeria. Such terrorist attacks have had a strong effect on the country's economy since farmers in the area are frightened away from growing their crops. In April 2014, Boko Haram abducted more than 200 schoolgirls, who as of this writing have not been returned.

Those familiar with the situation in northern Nigeria believe that Christian and Muslim organizations could greatly assist in ending conflicts said to be carried out in the name of religion. Many observers believe that the key lies with renewed efforts at interreligious dialogue. Founded in the 1950s, PROCMURA, the program for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa, continues to work to lower tensions through constructive engagement of churches and mosques in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Christian-Muslim Relations in Indonesia

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim majority country, and it also has large numbers of Protestants and Roman Catholics. Conservative Muslims often think that Christians seek to convert them, and Christians worry that Muslims want to make Indonesia into an Islamic state. Christians have always harbored a deep fear of Islamization. Under President Suharto Christians began to lose their influence with the regime and felt increasingly marginalized. In 1998 after the fall of the Suharto regime, an upsurge in violent Muslim-Christian conflicts took place throughout the country. The violence came as a surprise to many, who thought Indonesia's tradition of positive and harmonious interfaith relations, based on the five principles of pancasila, would prevail. Since Indonesia became an independent state in 1945, pancasila has served as its guiding philosophy, including among other principals freedom of religion within the framework of monotheism. The cause of violence has been attributed by many people to nonreligious factors such as politics and control of state power. Still, religious rhetoric has been used to mobilize groups and forces. The possibility of interreligious conflict has increased dramatically in recent years.

The GKJ (Java Christian Church) is working hard to avoid further deterioration in Muslim-Christian relations. In exchange for a kind of religious equilibrium, the church tries to cooperate with secular authorities. New forms of conflict transformation, specifically efforts toward peace-building, are gaining ground across communities that have experienced some of the worst conflicts. A group called Peace Provocateurs, for example, has worked to advance brotherhood and peace in Ambon, as a result of which Ambon has achieved relative calm. One of the largest Muslim organizations in Indonesia, the Muhammadiyah, is also working for peace and accepts Christians in its schools. In 2013, a large interfaith conference was co-sponsored by several Christian and Muslim organizations, leading to meetings across the country to air tensions, prevent violence, and promote harmony.

Despite peaceful efforts in Southeast Asia in general violence has not fully abated. Since 2000, several countries have seen the emergence of armed Islamist groups, such as Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines and Laskar Jihad in Indonesia. The world was shocked at the Bali bombings in 2002, carried out by an al-Qaida affiliate. Some observers argue that violence in Southeast Asia represents a defense response on the part of Muslims rather than aggressive fanaticism. Often it represents a response to efforts of local governments to extend their control over areas where Muslims are in the minority.

Christian-Muslim Relations in the Middle East

Relations between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East have been affected historically by territorial ambitions, competition over particular sites important to both religions, and constantly changing developments in the region's politics. The epicenter of Christian-Muslim relations after the rise of Islam, the Middle East is a complex, heterogeneous region, where the addition of the state of Israel has further complicated relations. The recent Arab Spring, pressures for a more Islamic state in Turkey, and international dialogue on the future of relations between Iran and the West have added to regional tensions.

Generally minorities (sometimes tiny ones) in states dominated by Muslim-majority populations, Christians are focused on trying to live as full and equal citizens. In some cases, especially in Syria and Egypt today, Christians are struggling for their very existence. Often they look back at periods in the region's history when tolerance and coexistence marked relations, and they hope that such examples from the past might help show the way forward to enhanced coexistence and more security for Christians in the future. Christians in Muslim-dominated areas generally support efforts to secure the separation of religion and state, while some Muslims argue that the two must not be separated. Christians worry that when no distinction is made between religion and politics they run the risk of being labeled noncitizens, even though they were the primary populations of their lands long before the beginning of Islam.

In general, Christians number about 5 percent of the total population of the Middle East. They account for some 40 percent of the population in Lebanon and 10 percent in Egypt. Israel/Palestine, home of the birth of Christianity, claims less than 2 percent of the population as Christian. Under the Ottoman Empire, from which the modern states of the Middle East were carved out by Western colonial powers, religious minorities were afforded legal protection by Qur'anic injunction. The modern states have mainly replaced these laws with modern civil codes. Nonetheless, divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims have deep roots in most areas of the Middle East and can sometimes serve as the central cause of harassment and discrimination.

Muslims, especially in states where they make up the majority of a population, are divided into various groups whose supporters uphold more progressive notions of government versus those who advance more conservative views. Modern Turkey, for example, is struggling to determine the degree to which it remains a secular state, the basis on which it was founded in 1924, or move toward the Islamicization of society. The latter option, of course, presents serious problems for its Christian minorities. Matters worsened in 2010 with the murder of the head of Turkey's Catholic Church, who had led Vatican efforts to improve Muslim-Christian relations in Turkey. The resulting tensions have encouraged some Islamist terrorist response and increased persecution of non-Muslim minorities.

For decades Lebanon was viewed as a kind of model of successful Christian-Muslim (and Druze) relationships at the level of the national government. Since Lebanon's civil war from 1975 to 1990 that balance has been upset. Now the deadly crisis in Syria threatens to escalate tensions among the several groups that make up the largest religious communities in Lebanon. Christian-Muslim relations are at a low point not experienced since the days of the Crusades. Christians are being killed in Lebanon as a direct result of the Syrian war, with churches destroyed, priests tortured, and bishops kidnapped. Fears are growing that indigenous Christian communities not only in Lebanon, but also in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria will be forced out of their native homes in the Middle East permanently.

Conservative Christian communities in the West, especially in the United States, have targeted the treatment of Christians by Muslims in the Middle East as a major concern. Why should we be asked to help foster appreciation of the religion of Islam in America, they question, when Christians are denied their rights in many Middle Eastern countries? In Saudi Arabia, for example, non-Muslim houses of worship are sometimes burned; religious police regularly close down the operations of Christian Bible distributors and of churchgoers in general; school textbooks are often intolerant of Christianity and Judaism; names that sound too Christian or Jewish are forbidden to be given to babies, among other actions.

Despite these deteriorating circumstances and their negative effects on Muslim-Christian relations, some efforts are being made in the Middle East to promote better understanding between the two long-standing neighboring communities. In the 20th century, both Christians and Muslims worked to improve relations and to build on a long history of peaceful coexistence. Dialogue has taken place both through the structured efforts of organizations, such as the World Council of Churches, and in more informal settings. Some groups of Christians, in particular the Orthodox Church, have begun to reexamine the sources of the respective faiths and, on a theological level, to see God working through religions such as Islam. Efforts are being made to break away from the Western concept of nationalism and to emphasis the common historical and linguistic links shared between Christians and Muslims, looking for more positive models for the future.

Christian-Muslim Relations in Europe

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of newly demarcated states in the Middle East, the retreat of colonialist powers around the world, the creation of the states of Pakistan and Israel, the rise of the Islamic republic in Iran, postcolonial conflicts in Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the breakup of Yugoslavia and consequent ethnic cleansing-these and many other factors have led to large numbers of Muslims moving to western Europe. Some have come as refugees, some simply seeking a better life. Following the ties developed through Western colonialism Muslims have come from Turkey to Germany, from North Africa to France, from Indonesia to the Netherlands, from the Indian subcontinent to Britain. More recently, refugees have arrived, and continue to arrive, from Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, and elsewhere. Some 30 million Muslims now make their home in Europe.

The great rise in Muslim immigration in the last several decades is perhaps the single most important factor influencing the ways in which Europeans view Muslims. Muslims are arriving in virtually all the countries of Europe from all over the world, looking for work, education, and a better life. Europeans, for their part, see Muslims not only as part of a generally foreign religion that has been viewed as both repellant and seductively attractive through the decades of the last century or more, but now also as neighbors and even competitors for employment and the services of the state. Islam is no longer a "foreign" religion but a genuinely European one, with predictions that, in some cities, the majority of the population will be Muslim in the coming decades. This, of course, creates a dramatically new situation for Christian-Muslim relations.

Some very specific events in different parts of Europe have led to outrage by Muslims and thus to rising tensions between the two communities. Particularly noteworthy were the so-called cartoon controversies, which started with the publication in a Danish newspaper on September 30, 2005, of a series of some twelve cartoons, most deprecating the prophet Muhammad. One image that portrayed Muhammad's turban as a bomb constituted one of the most offensive drawings. The cartoons were reprinted in more than fifty newspapers worldwide, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of Muslims took to the streets to protest and riot, leading to incidents of brutality and killing. Christians were shocked, Muslims were angry and hurt, and interfaith relations suffered a serious setback.

Acts of terror on the part of Muslims, including the bombings in New York, Madrid, and London, have helped to polarize European responses to Muslims and Islam. Events that are mainly about political power or economic resources nonetheless may be identified with the religion of the perpetrators. Negative stereotyping by the press and media promote fear among the general public. In France the official state policy of laïcité (laicism) has led to numerous incidents of conflict when Muslims have insisted on such public manifestations of the faith as the wearing of the headscarf or the application of Sharia law.

Muslims, meanwhile, wonder why Europeans can so often fail to relate their own subjugation of native Muslim populations through the various means of Western imperialism and colonization to subsequent acts of violence on the part of Muslims. Many immigrants experience a kind of continuation of colonialist treatment in various European countries, some feeling marginalized, disaffected, and economically passed over. Instead of the wonderful new life they dreamed of they find inferior educational opportunities, unemployment (in some European cities up to 70 percent of the Muslim population is unemployed), and poor housing. For some immigrants these disparate conditions lead to violence, crime, drug use, and increasing radicalization, especially of youth. The relative ease of travel to home countries may, in some cases, encourage immigrants to identify with radical elements of Islam. In Sweden, for example, which is a fairly new host to Muslim immigrants, journalists attest to the presence of some 1,500 Islamic extremists.

A second generation of Muslims is now fully established as citizens of respective European countries, doubling in the last decade. Muslim imams are not only imported from the Middle East and other Muslim areas, but also are being trained as "homegrown" clerics in France and elsewhere. Islam is growing in many European countries not only because of immigration, but also because of high rates of birth as well as conversion. Convert women are among the most active in participating in interfaith discussions and in explaining Islam to non-Muslims.

Issues such as wearing of the hijab, public call to prayer and building of mosques with visible minarets, availability of halal meat, participation of Muslim girls in some public school activities, and a host of other issues must be faced by Europeans. Some among the Muslim population, perhaps growing, want nothing to do with Western life and values, leading to feelings of marginalization and economic disadvantage. Conversations between Muslims and other Europeans are also difficult because of the high level of anti-Muslim prejudice, encouraged by the press and other forms of media.

Changes in European churches have made it difficult to bring Christians and Muslims together for conversation. As Protestant churches are increasingly empty except for ritual events, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic populations are on the rise. Fortunately, some positive developments in interfaith relations are taking place. Some Protestant churches are attempting to educate their parishioners about Islam. Muslims and Christians are working together on issues of everyday life, with interaction between women on the increase. Some efforts on the part of Christian churches to address these issues of disparity and to attempt to promote better understanding and even dialogue have proven successful. In some cases, churches and mosque communities are working together to counter the new militant atheism that is increasingly popular in Europe. The churches themselves, however, have generally lost power and influence in most of Europe and find resources for such efforts sadly lacking.

Since his installation in March 2013 Pope Francis has encouraged the Roman Catholic Church to intensify its dialogue with Islam and with Muslim leaders so that each community views the other not as the enemy but as brothers and sisters. Initiatives such as the Anglican Church's "Building Bridges Seminar" with Muslims and Christians have laid the ground for common study of scripture, understanding the social challenges each community faces, and identifying the challenges of violence, poverty, and injustice. An important ingredient in these conversations is the understanding that the religious communities of Europe share a common history and face a united future, whether they want it or not. The World Council of Churches, which has promoted interfaith conversation among all major religious groups since the mid-20th century, is working now to promote bilateral dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the context of multilateral events.

Christian-Muslim Relations in the United States

The American Muslim community is greatly diverse, including ethnic, racial, denominational, and ideological distinctions. Most American Muslims are immigrants or from immigrant families, while more than 30 percent are African American or Latino/a. The vast majority are Sunni, with a significant minority of Shi'a and a number of smaller sectarian, often heterodox, communities. Among the groups that have been most amenable to dialogue in the United States are South Asians (generally fluent in English), Iranians, and certain Arabs. America's political relationships with Muslim countries inevitably affect the nature of the dialogue.

The African American Muslim community began most notably with the development of the Nation of Islam in the mid-20th century. After the death of its founder Elijah Muhammad, under the leadership of Elijah's son Warith Deen Mohammed the community moved away from the quasi-Muslim ideology of the Nation to enter mainstream Islam. Many other African Americans have joined Sunni and even Shi'a Islam, while sectarian movements continue to attract young blacks and Latino/as.

American Muslims for over a decade have decried the acts of the 9/11 terrorists and defended Islam as a religion of peace. They want to exercise their constitutional rights to free speech in expressing their objection to certain American foreign policies, at the same time that they fear the consequences of the Patriot Act and other actions they view as assaults on their civil liberties. Meanwhile other Americans are struggling to understand that the Muslims with whom they interact in businesses, schools, and neighborhoods are different from the Muslim extremists who are calling for even more dire measures against the United States. Right-wing evangelical rhetoric against Islam has been fueled by incidents of international terrorism involving Muslims. Islamophobia, literally fear of Islam, has grown steadily in the United States since the attacks of 9/11. Analysts sometimes identify what they call the Islamophobia industry in America, which produces anti-Muslim material at an estimated worth of more than 40 million dollars each year.

Christian-Muslim dialogue in the United States has taken a number of forms. Until recently, most of it has been initiated by Christian denominations, organizations, and churches. Since 2005 some Muslim groups have become interested in opening conversations with Christian and Jewish neighbors to help explain that theirs is a religion of peace and not one of hatred and violence as it is often portrayed by the media. Some dialogues are highly academic, featuring religious professionals from the ranks of clergy or university professors. Other conversations are more informal, with both sides attempting simply to learn a little about each other. Those who favor dialogue believe that when citizens of a pluralistic society know more about each other they can become more understanding, charitable, and perhaps even appreciative of each other's contributions.

Rather than the traditional interfaith conversations about theology, newer efforts are being made to find topics of mutual interest and contemporary relevance. One example is the dialogue focused on a shared approach to decisions about moral and ethical matters, such as questions related to family and gender relations, ecology, or the consequences of new technologies and scientific advancements. Some Muslims and Christians are finding common ground in learning more about each other's ritual practices. This can mean not only discussing, but also observing, and even, in some cases, participating in the rituals of the other. On rare occasions it may take the form of specially designed interfaith worship.

Many of the formal dialogues held in America have been sponsored by national religious organizations. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for well over a decade has organized dialogues among religious leaders, primarily priests and imams, held on both coasts and in the Midwest. The National Council of Churches recently began a nationwide dialogue focused on issues of human rights and on countering stereotypical portrayals of Muslims and Islam in the media. A number of Christian denominations, most notably the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, and United Church of Christ, have been creative in developing new forms of engagement with Islam.

Until recently most national Muslim organizations have not been proactive in developing dialogue with Christians. This situation is changing, however, and national groups such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Council of North America, the Muslim American Society, and the Muslim Political Action Committee have added concern for building better interfaith relations to their agendas. Muslims are starting to understand that they must develop their own language of encounter. Both cultural and linguistic gaps must be overcome. Within the Muslim community itself certain asymmetries serve to further complicate efforts at communication with other faith communities. South Asians and Sunnis are heavily overrepresented in most conversation groups, while African Americans and Shi'a tend to be overlooked. African Americans may be further marginalized insofar as problems they may consider most salient, such as poverty or racism, are not usually broached as subjects of interfaith dialogue.

Of major concern to both Muslims and Christians is finding ways in which to involve young people in interfaith engagement. Along with activities that involve action rather than conversation, youth are attracted by the growing use of social media and networking to foster interfaith engagement. Efforts are currently underway to develop social media as a new channel for interreligious and intercultural discussion. Most colleges and universities provide comprehensive lists of interfaith organizations on their respective campuses.

The "Common Word" Initiative

One fairly recent Muslim-initiated event designed to improve Muslim-Christian relations is worth exploration in some detail. It began with yet another incident interpreted by Muslims as an insult to their religion. Response to that incident led to an unprecedented Muslim invitation to dialogue. In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave a talk in Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted derogatory remarks about Islam made by a Byzantine emperor in the 15th century. Muslims were deeply offended by the apparent insult to their religion and their Prophet Muhammad, and again violence broke out. The pope publicly apologized for his remarks and insisted that the words of the Byzantine emperor in no way reflected his own feelings. Nonetheless, the speech was taken by Muslims as a reiteration of ancient diatribe by Christians against Islam, portraying it as a violent and irrational religion.

In 2007, 138 Muslim Sunni and Shi'a leaders, including two women and representing countries and cultures around the world, signed a letter called "A Common Word between Us and You." The initiative for the "Common Word" missive came from the Royal Aal al-Bait Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman, Jordan. Divided into three parts, the letter cites the scriptural basis in both Islam and Christianity for (1) the call to love of God, (2) the call to love of neighbor, (3) common ground for future dialogue. The theme is taken from Qur'an verse 3:64, "Say, O People of the Book [Christians and Jews]! Come to a common word between us and you."

While the pope was intended as the primary recipient, the document was also addressed to the heads of many different Christian communions. It has received a variety of responses not only from Roman Catholics, but also from other Christians, including evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and several Orthodox leaders. The "Common Word" letter was designed to affirm that while differences exist, a sound basis exists for religious understanding as well as for practical cooperation between Christianity and Islam. It represents a major effort by Muslims to challenge their Christian counterparts to join them in affirming commonalities at a time when reactionary voices within each tradition are decrying the other and fueling regional conflicts in various parts of the world. In many ways "A Common Word" can be said to be unique, an invitation unparalleled in the history of Christian-Muslim relations.

That 138 Muslims took the initiative to reach out to Christians, and that interfaith meetings continue to occur as its result, represents a signal breakthrough whatever its specific conclusions. It remains to be seen whether the "Common Word" and the discussions it has spawned will really break new ground or will simply be one more example of the conundrums that have deadlocked Christian-Muslim dialogue over the centuries. It also remains to be seen if the theological differences identified as a result of the document can be pursued with enthusiasm because of the challenges they present, and whether the issues of (in)justice to which many Christian respondents have pointed can serve as a stimulus to the world's leading clerics and religious intellectuals to actually move in the direction of more peaceful solutions for a world deeply in need of strong moral leadership.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Muslim-Christian Relations: Historical and Contemporary Realities - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Throughout the nearly fifteen centuries of Muslim-Christian encounter, individual adherents of both traditions often have lived peaceably with each other. At the same time, Muslim expansion into Christian territories and Christian imperialism in Muslims lands have fostered fear and ill-will on both sides.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Religious Tension in India

India has a long tradition of religious tension. While there has been historic tension between Christians and Muslims, Hindus and Christians, and numerous other sects, one of the most significant, sustained religious conflicts has been between Hindus and Muslims. This struggle has raged since Islam spread into the Indian Peninsula in the early 700s. In the 20th century, this tension was a major factor in the partition of the British colony of India into the new states of India and Pakistan.

Hinduism vs. Islam

Before we go any further, however, we very quickly need to provide a basic context. Let's begin with Hinduism.

Hinduism is considered one of the world's oldest religions. It predates Christianity and Islam by centuries. Hinduism is a difficult religion for many Westerners to understand because it doesn't have a rigidly structured and prescribed set of beliefs. In many ways, Hinduism is inclusive toward other religions. It is often considered more of a way of life or a philosophical framework rather than 'religion' in the traditional sense. In a nutshell, Hinduism regards life as a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, with Karma acting as a guiding force.

Islam is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of Muhammad, who lived between 570-632 BCE. Followers of Islam are called Muslims. Muslims worship the Supreme Being, Allah, and follow his revelations contained in their sacred text, the Quran.

Religious Tension and the Partition of India

So, as I mentioned, Hindu-Muslim conflict in India has been going on for centuries; it is nothing new. Throughout the Middle Ages, Muslim expansion into the Indian Peninsula threatened the Hindu way of life. In time, some Indians converted to Islam. Throughout the Modern Age, Indian Muslims and Indian Hindus coexisted within a fragile system, with violence often breaking out between the two groups.

In the 20th century, Hindu-Muslim tension played a vital role in the partition of British India. While Hindu Indians dominated the central and eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, Muslim Indians dominated the western part of the region (in what is now Pakistan). This is important to remember as we move forward!

In the early 20th century, many Muslim Indians belonged to the upper classes of society. But as democratic thinking grew among the poor and lower classes, which had a large composition of Hindus, many Muslim Indians became concerned. Hindus were increasingly coming to power. The Muslim League, technically called the All-India Muslim League, was established in 1906 to protect the civil rights of Muslim Indians, particularly those of the upper class.

Meanwhile, the Indian National Congress, a political organization and party established in 1885, worked to secure greater autonomy from the British Raj. The term 'British Raj' simply refers to British rule over the Indian subcontinent. While the Indian National Congress contained some members who were also members of the Muslim League, by the 1930s it became increasingly dominated by Hindus. By this time, many Indians also began demanding complete independence from British rule.

Enter Gandhi. Mohandas Gandhi was the leading figure of India's independence movement. He became famous for his acts of civil disobedience toward British authority. Gandhi's vision of a free India consisted of a secular democratic republic, in which all Indians regardless of religion or class lived together in harmony. Gandhi's program of satyagraha, or passive resistance, helped inspire a mass movement, which finally convinced the British to grant Indian independence. As British authority in India was rapidly deteriorating, the Muslim League began demanding the formation of a separate nation-state for Muslim Indians.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
muslim and hindu conflict in india and the partition of india and pakistan - video & lesson transcript | study.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Muslim and Hindu Conflict in India and the Partition of India and Pakistan - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
India has a long tradition of religious tension. While there has been historic tension between Christians and Muslims, Hindus and Christians, and numerous other sects, one of the most significant, sustained religious conflicts has been between Hindus and Muslims. This struggle has raged since Islam spread into the Indian Peninsula in the early 700s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
History of islam in Nigeria - how many years does it number? It is worth bearing in mind the importance of historical development of Islam in Nigeria, so read the article.
Religion in Nigeria
About 55% of the population are Muslims, 40% are representatives of Christianity (the majority consists of Protestants), about 5% of Nigerians adhere to traditional African beliefs (animism, fetishism, the worship of ancestors and forces of nature). Islamic movement began in the 12th century AD during the existence of the centralized state Kanem-bornu (present-day Northern Nigeria).
History of islam in Nigeria
First major centralized state in Northern Nigeria was Kanem-bornu, the occurrence of which belongs to the late 8th century A. D. To the 15th century in Nigeria was strengthened Islam, it was brought here through the desert traders-Muslims. Since the 12th century, all rulers - were Muslims. The influence of Islam affected the management system and legal proceedings, and also contributed to the creation of the Muslim elite.
Hajj
Every year about 100 thousand pilgrims from Nigeria to make Hajj. The Nigerian government claims that authorities are doing everything possible to ensure the comfort of piligrims and help in committing their sacred duty. The Nigerian government every year pays off 25% of the cost of Hajj. In addition, thousands of pilgrims, who are unable to pay for the spiritual journey, go to Hajj at the expense of the government. Trying to repeal the law on subsidising Hajj, the government is faced with such determined resistance, this idea was abandoned.
The splitting line North-South OR impact of Islam in Nigeria
In Nigeria, one of the world's largest oil traders, the main interdenominational line breaks the territory of the country from North to South. In 1960, Nigeria, which at that time belonged to great Britain, gained independence. During the long period of colonial years were artificially created all the conditions for inter-ethnic tensions. Full-scale inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts have led to Civil war in 1967-1970 years and installed a brutal military dictatorship.

1. In the late 1990s in the country deteriorated interethnic and interreligious conflicts.

2. In 1999 there were clashes between ethnic groups, itsekiri, urhobo and ijaw, which killed about 200 people.

3. In 2001, these conflicts have claimed the lives of nearly a thousand people in 2004, killing about seven hundred people.

4. In 2006, there were clashes between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria that killed more than 100 people.

5. In November 2008 300 people were killed, the reason for the massacre was a victory in the local elections of the Muslim party. Bloody clashes in Nigeria occurred in 2010.

6. On the 16th of January 2011 there were new sectarian clashes between the Muslim and Christian communities in Jos, located in Central Nigeria.

In the main mosque for later burials over 150 bodies of killed during violent acts were collected. It is not excluded that there could be more dead people. The situation in the city was extremely tense. In addition to the many people killed, hundreds were injured. Damaged buildings, part of which was burned by aggressive rioters. About five thousand local residents left their permanent places of residence for fear of violence. The causes of the conflict from both warring sides are different. According to one version, the conflict occurred because of the unwillingness of some to live next door to "alien" Muslims. A few times the start of the conflict situations was given after a series of offensive attacks against Islam on the part of some missionaries-preachers.
READ ALSO: Corruption in Nigeria aiding Boko Haram insurgency - Report
Corruption, poverty, economic and social problems and religious contradictions - act as a catalyst, and in the end it all comes to bloodshed. The roots of religious conflicts - artificial and controlled from the outside. In Northern Nigeria, where Islam is widespread, the Western Protestant colonists founded their settlements and arranged a farm on the territories of the Muslim communities. Support is provided to them by the Nigerian military and official authorities, who took a Pro-Western course. All this contributes to the escalation of tension in the country. In turn, the world of Islamic scholars is never tired of calling for ethnic and religious peace and good-neighbourly relations.
Islamic Sharia law in Nigeria
In 2010, the head of Libya Muammar Gaddafi proposed to divide Nigeria into two States, Christian and Muslim - to end inter-religious violence in the country. The Libyan leader called on to divide the country on the model of the separation of Pakistan from India in 1947. Lagos would be the capital of the Christians in southern Nigeria, and Abuja - the capital of Muslims in the North. But in response, the Ministry of foreign Affairs of Nigeria, announced the recall of its Ambassador from Libya.

In the 1990s the situation in Nigeria was very difficult, and in search of ways of its normalization, the vast majority of the population of the Northern States of Nigeria has initiated the introduction of Sharia in the Northern States.

In 1999, Sharia law was introduced in one of the Nigerian States for the first time. In some States (mostly in the Northern), there are Sharia courts which are in charge respectively of cases involving Islamic law or customary law (the courts of chiefs). Sharia law is only provided for Muslims, Christians and animists apply customary law.

The introduction of the Sharia has become a convenient pretext for the prosecution of Muslims in provoking inter-religious conflict, and violation of the Constitution. The world's media and especially the US, tried really hard not to put in the best light Nigerian Muslims who want order in the country.
History of Islamic education in Nigeria
Against this background, the approval of Muslim leaders of Nigeria that Sharia is today actually the only real shield that can protect the country from the AIDS epidemic and the repetition of the fate of Uganda and South Africa, a huge part of the non-Muslim population which is HIV-infected, remained without attention of the government and the forces supporting them abroad.

For Muslims living in non-Islamic countries, one of the main problems in the education of full Islamic community, the transmission of Islamic knowledge to their children. It can't be said that this problem is completely solved, even in countries in which there is a Muslim community which has achieved the greatest results and success in building Islamic infrastructure.

Muhammadu Buhari is to introduce Islam in the public secondary education. However, the teachers believe that this is the first step in combating discrimination of Islamic Sciences. In many schools there are even teachers for Islamic studies, for example in Lagos state.

President Buhari invited the Federal schools to adopt two textbooks, written by famous Sambo Bashir. By the way, one of the books of the scientist is - "The Quran and its Tafsir".
READ ALSO: Pastor and 14 other Christians allegedly convert to Islam in Kwara state
The President also expressed the opinion that the revival of teaching of the Islamic Sciences is of paramount importance in the background of the decline of morality and religious values in the country.

Meanwhile, Muslim teachers, and organizations are cautioned that this measure is insufficient to fill the gap that emerged during the years of neglecting Islamic education.

We need to tell the truth: only legislative measures and strict control in the implementation of the state anti-discrimination policy will provide equal educational opportunities in public schools, unable to resist the forces that continue to suppress the collective desire of Muslim parents and to deprive children of education in accordance with clear Islamic ideals.

He also stressed the need for substantial investment to improve educational infrastructure, training and promotion of teachers of Islam.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
History of islam in Nigeria - how many years does it number? It is worth bearing in mind the importance of historical development of Islam in Nigeria, so read the article.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Islam is one of the fastest growing religions of the world. Its followers have spread all across the globe and with every day that passes it experiences and increase in its followers. The religion that was previously thought as to be the religion of Arabia is now a universal religion and it has followers from all types of ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

The information of Islam that people other than Muslims have is what comes from media, and sadly media is quite biased in this regard and tries to portray Islam as a negative religion. This post will not discuss how media portrays Islam or how it ought to portray it, but this writing will give a short introduction of what Islam is and what characteristics and attributes it entails.
Islam:
The literal meaning of the word Islam is 'peace'. It is a religion that was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) over fourteen hundred years ago in Saudi Arabia. As per Muslim beliefs, Islam is the last religion that Allah Almighty has sent for the guidance of mankind and there wont be any other religion following it. Moreover, Islam is not just a religion that gives only the religious way of life, rather it is complete code of life and speaks about every matter of life, whether it is economics, politics, or social life and so on.

Key Figures:
In Islam there are two key figures that are of importance and without the knowledge of which one cannot begin the understanding or knowing of religion.

1. The first key figure in Islam is Allah Almighty. He is the Lord, Creator and the Sustainer of life in this universe. According to Muslim belief, Allah is the only Lord, He neither has any parent, siblings, or children. He is the One and Only.

2. The second key figure in Islam is Muhammad (PBUH). He is the Prophet of Islam and Allah Almighty revealed the religion to Him. He was born in the year 570 in Makkah and when He was 40 years old, He received the first revelation. Afterwards He formally started preaching Islam till the age of 63 when He died in Madina. For Muslims there is no other personality in this world more revere and respect worthy than Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Doctrine:
Like all he other religions of the world that have some doctrine which they follow, Islam has the doctrine in the form of Holy Quran. It is the Divine Book that was revealed on Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) over the course of 23 years and it contains all the guidelines that Muslims require to stick to the path of righteousness. Due to this imperativeness and the fact that the recitation or reading of Quran comes with religious reward, millions of Muslims across the world learn Quran and try to understand the message that Almighty wanted to convey through it.

There is a secondary doctrine as well which Muslims follow in case they are not able to comprehend the message of Quran. This doctrine is Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), which are a collection of His traditions and sayings. Thus, when Muslims find any ambiguity in understanding Quran, they consult the hadith and find the practical implementations of the commendations of Quran.
Converting To Islam:
When a person decides to convert to Islam, he or she has to proclaim Shahadah, the declaration in which he or she states that there is no God but Allah and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is His Messenger. In addition to saying this verbally, a converting Muslim must also believe in it from the bottom of the heart as well.
Pillars Of Islam:
There are five major pillars of Islam, which stand as an obligation for every Muslim and the absence of any of them leaves a void in the faith which is only completed when the pillars are practiced. The first pillar is of Shadah, where a Muslim testifies to the Oneness of Allah and the Prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH) from tongue and from the heart. The second pillar is Salah, as per which offering five prayers on their prescribed time daily is an obligation upon every Muslim. The third pillar is Sawm, as per which it is obligatory upon every Muslim to fast in the month of Ramadan. The fourth pillar is of Zakah, as per which a Muslim is to give a certain ratio of his or her wealth in charity if the wealth they possess is more than the limit prescribed by Allah Almighty. The fifth pillar of Islam is Hajj, which is the pilgrimage that Muslims undertake to pay homage to the house of Allah in Macca. All of these pillars need to be practiced if a Muslim wishes to stay true to the faith.
Articles Of Faith:
In addition to the pillars of Islam, there are the articles of faith as well, that represent the belief system of a Muslim. The articles of faith in Islam are as follows:

1. Believing in Allah Almighty

2. Believing in Angels

3. Believing in all the Holy Books

4. Believing in all the Prophets

5. Believing in the day of Judgment

6. Believing in the existence of fate

7. Believing in rising up after death

Key Concept:
There are some key concept of the religion Islam as well, following which every Muslim lives his or her life. Some of the key concept that are a common knowledge of every Muslim are as follows:
1. Transitory Nature of This World:
Every Muslim believes that this world is transitory and it all will come to an end one day. Therefore, a true Muslim tries to live in this world as if he or she were in some inn and they will have to move on once the night ends.
2. Eternal Life in Hereafter:
As is the Muslim belief that the life of this world is temporal and it will end, so is the belief of a Muslim that the life after this world is what is eternal and would last forever. Therefore, Muslims keep their eye on the life hereafter.
3. Hell And Heaven:
Muslims believe that those who do good deeds in this world as per the instructions of Allah Almighty will receive the reward in the form of Heaven in the afterlife, where they will enjoy an eternal life. On the other hand, those who fall stray and do not stick to righteousness will receive hell as a punishement in which they will live forever.
Conclusion:
In short, Islam is a comprehensive way of life and speaks about almost every matter of life. However, the aforementioned are some key concept which can easily be traced and observed in every Muslim as they are the core of the Islamic belief system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Islam is one of the fastest growing religions of the world. Its followers have spread all across the globe and with every day that passes it experiences and increase in its followers. The religion that was previously thought as to be the religion of Arabia is now a universal religion and it has followers from all types of ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The current Muslims, especially the young generation, and the "potential new Muslims " in the western world are confused about the state of Muslim affairs. The intra-religion conflicts within the various denominations of Muslims are harming Islam. Although, Islam forbids the creation of denominations but unfortunately Muslim scholars created these denominations anyway. There are so-called Muslims in every denomination claiming that they understand Islam better than the others. These few Muslims raise their voices so loud that the voices of the majority die-down and what ordinary people listen are the voices of fanatics.

These fanatics justify their beliefs and actions through Qur'an and the Hadith. Therefore ordinary Muslims are puzzled. Muslims themselves are to blame for the troubles they are causing in the name of Islam. Muslims scholars, Imams, Muftis, etc... must bear the responsibility of pushing away Muslims from Islam. Islam that some of us is practicing has never been practiced by the Muslims.

My heart cries when I see a son calling his own Muslim parents a "MUSHRIK" (Pagan). My heart cries when a young son leaves his Muslim parent's home in the name of Islam because his parents wanted to attend Eid Milad-un-Nabi program. It is so sad to see that some Muslims hate other Muslims in the name of Islam. What's going on? This religious fanaticism has deep roots. It is the responsibility of all Muslims to uproot this fanaticism. On one side Muslims are facing American aggression, and on the other side some ill-minded Muslims are spreading hate against Muslims in the name of Islam.

Let me share with you some of my recent experience in several programs that I attended recently. These are all true stories.

A "potential" Muslim, who is interested in Islam but has not accepted Islam yet, asked me what brand of Islam he should accept. Should he accept;

Islam followed by Sunnis?

Islam followed by Shi'as?

Islam followed by Wahabis?

Islam followed by some other sects and groups?

Imagine, if this person would have been during the time of Prophet (Peace be upon him) or his companions (May Allah's blessings upon them) time, would he be asking these questions? He told me that he agrees with the basic beliefs of Islam especially the belief of Towheed (oneness of Allah). But there are significant differences in details among Muslims. Wahabis call Shi'as as KAFIR (non-believers) and Shi'as call Wahabis as non-believers. Wahabis call Sunnis as non-believers and Sunnis call all others as Hell going Muslims. If I become Muslim I want to be considered a believer not a non-believer.

The "crime " of calling a Muslim, a BID'ATEE / MUSHRIK / KAFIR (non-Muslim) is not the issue of Muslims in Muslim countries anymore. Muslims have imported this horrible "crime" in North America as well. Criticizing Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) and hiding his high honours is no more the responsibility of fanatic non-Muslims. Several self-claimed Muslim scholars have taken this "important" responsibility on their own shoulders.

In many programs there were questions and answers sessions. In these sessions, the most common questions / comments from ordinary Muslims were not related to the major current issues of Muslim Ummah. For example, what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan? What will be the future of Palestine? How the conflicts in Chechnya and Kashmir will be resolved? How can we save the honours and the properties of Muslims? How can we help to end the sufferings of human beings? But the most common questions were;

Is organizing a program called Meeld-un-Nabi permissible in Islam?

Is reading Qur'an (Qur'an Khwani) on certain occasions permissible in Islam?

Can Muhammad (Peace be upon him) intercede for us?

How much knowledge Muhammad (Peace be upon him) had?

Why should we praise Muhammad (Peace be upon him)? He was an ordinary human being. What is so special about him?

Can we say Salaam on Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) while standing?

How to counter the black magic?

It is very clear that the Muslims are no more interested in the bigger interest of Muslim Ummah. As an Ummah we are trying our best not to fulfill our responsibilities. The individualism is flourishing among Muslims. Every Imam, Mufti, scholar, leader wants to unite Muslims around himself. This is what anti-Islam forces want from Muslims and we are happily and knowingly serving their purpose. The anti-Islam forces want that the Muslims should remain occupied with minor issues and does not find time to focus on the major issues.

Let me share with you some of the horror stories of deep division among Muslims. These are my personal experiences.

ISCC, Ontario invited a Shi'a scholar in its May 10th program at the Ontario Science Centre. Hundreds of Muslims attended this wonderful gathering. The idea was to show Muslim unity and send a positive message to all Canadians about Islam. But a handful Muslims did not like the idea. They not only boycotted the program but they also issued a Fatwa against inviting a Shi'a scholar in the gathering of Sunnis. One of them who claims that he can cure all kinds of magic wrote in an email to me ".......... invited rafidhi aalim in Ontario Science centre program? Did he not invited the killers of Sahaba and Ahle Bayt? "

You may see how careless this person is? First of all Sahaba and Ahle Bayt lived 1400 years ago. How someone now can be blamed in Toronto for their sufferings? This kind of behaviour from some Muslims who apparently look like big SHAIKHS (scholars) causes confusion and distress for the Muslim community. I have seen similar attitude of many Muslims in Muslim countries.

In Toronto, I met a Muslim brother who, very proudly, told me that he did not pray Friday prayers for 10 years when he migrated to Canada. I asked him, were there no mosques in Toronto at that time? He said, " there were several mosques but there was non belonging to his sect. ". I explained to him that he made a very grave mistake by missing Friday prayers for 10 years. This man not only insisted but he gathered few more similar minded Muslims. These Muslims when go to Makkah and Madinah, they do not pray behind the Imams of Grand Mosques in Makkah and Madinah. Although, I wholeheartedly disagree with the beliefs of Wahabi sect (most of the Imams in Saudi Arabia follow Wahabi sect) but I also know that it is a bigger sin to divide Muslims. Prayers are for Allah. He knows our intentions and He will accept or reject our prayers based upon our beliefs and intentions.

During a question and answer session a teenager boy who lived in Saudi Arabia for 15 years and recently migrated to Canada with his parents told me that " Muhammad is asking too much from us. How can I love him more than my own parents and brothers and sisters?" When I tried to explain to him the Right's of Allah's Messenger (Peace be upon him) upon Muslims, he started quoting those verses from the holy Qur'an in which some misguided Muslims find, in their own opinion, the mistakes (A'oozo billah, I seek Allah's refuge from Satan) of Muhammad (Peace be upon him). Soon, I realized that this young boy was not trained by Christians or any non-Muslims to dishonour Muhammad (Peace be upon him) but he was trained by the Muslims. Many times, I have heard similar disrespectful comments about Allah's Messenger (Peace be upon him) from " apparently "very learned Muslim scholars.

There is not a single verse in Qur'an that can be used to undermine the high honours of Allah's Messenger (Peace be upon him). In fact, the entire Qur'an praises Allah's beloved Messenger. However, the wicked hearts and eyes see the reflection of their own wickedness in the mirror of Prophethood and these Muslims do not realize their own shortcomings. They try to find any thing negative in Prophet of Islam and they still think that they are the best Muslims. What a mirage!

There are Muslims with huge grudge against the early Muslims especially the Sahabah (the companions of Prophet Muhammad, May Allah's peace and blessings upon them). These people have nothing but one goal in their lives - to dishonour the wives and the companions of Allah's Messenger (Peace be upon him). They create hate among present Muslims by using the conflicts of early Muslims. These conflicts were developed and dealt with 1400 years ago. Why we need to revive those conflicts in 21st century and further divide Muslims? Why we need to judge early Muslims? Why can't we leave this judgment for Allah? There are scholars from this sect who criticize the companions of Allah's Messenger while majority of Muslims sees these companions as heroes. It is in the interest of all Muslims to respect each other's beliefs and try to focus on the similarities instead of differences. Almighty Allah will decide what took place 1400 years ago among the companions of Allah's Messenger. We all will see Allah's Judgment on the Judgment Day (Insha Allah). Let's not destroy our peace now.

Causes of Fanaticism Among Muslims

Wrong Focus: The current focus of majority of Imams, scholars and spiritual leaders (Murshad) is on prayers, WAZA-IF, rituals, dresses and appearance. The ordinary Muslims follow the Imams and the leaders, therefore, ordinary Muslim thinks that Islam is confined within a dress and some rituals. This is not correct. The focus of Islam is human interaction, not isolation. A Muslim prays, dresses a particular type of dress and looks like a certain kind of person but if fellow human beings are not safe from his / her tongue and hands then this person is not practicing Islam given to Muslims by Muhammad (Peace be upon him). The focus of Islam is HEART not appearance. Today's Muslim is completely focused on appearance not heart. Unless Faith penetrates deep inside the heart the apparent Muslim is called Hypocrite in Qur'an.Once the faith purifies the heart, the appearance automatically becomes Islamic. But today's Muslim is doing the opposite. They want to look like a Muslim regardless what the condition of heart is? This is cosmetics and creates frustration and vanity in a person's character.

Some well-off Muslims do not bother to learn the basics but they help others to learn Islam.

Some influential Muslim leaders including self-claimed spiritual leaders (PEERS) do not want that the ordinary Muslims get education including the basic Islamic education. They purposely keep their followers away from education in order to abuse them and misuse them.

Once a friend of mine asked a truck driver in rural Punjab (Pakistan) what is KALIMAH (Declaration of Faith)? This Muslim truck driver said, " I do not know KALIMAH only Murshad (leader) knows the Kalimah ". The lack of basic knowledge confuses Muslims and forces them to depend on someone else's knowledge.

Islam came to win the hearts of people not to break their hearts. But today's Islamic preachers insult, humiliate and condemn human beings.

A friend of mine is a neighbour to a Sikh family. Both families are good neighbours to each other. Once few preachers of Islam came to my friend's (Muslim) house to invite him to a mosque. The non-Muslim neighbour saw them. As a courtesy he approached them and invited them to his house. This was a perfect opportunity to these preachers of Islam to invite this non-Muslim fellow towards Islam. Instead of accepting his invitation one of the preacher said to him with rudeness, " we will not come to your house because we cut and eat what you worship (cow) ". Is this Islam? Certainly, not. Muslims were never like this. From where this kind of attitude is coming?

The Strong Bond with Favourite Religious / Spiritual Leaders: Since most of us do not know Islam very well we rely on our Imams, scholars and spiritual leaders. A sincere and a true spiritual leader (Murshad) or a scholar of Islam is like a guide. It is the responsibility of a Murshad or a scholar to guide the people and connect them with Allah and the Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him). A Murshad connects Allah's creation with Allah by following the methods of Muhammad (Peace be upon him). A Murshad helps fellow human beings in developing the love and respect for Allah's Messenger (Peace be upon him). In reward, Allah creates Murshad's love and respect in the hearts of fellow human beings. For Murshad and his followers the centre of love and obedience is Allah and His Messenger. The great sufis of Islam like Hazrat Abdul Qadir Jilani, Hazrat Khawaja Ajmeree, Hazrat Bahauddin Naqshbandi and many others never ever said or did any thing against the teachings of Qur'an and the Sunnah. They never divided Muslims. They united them under the flag of Islam.. They were the true MURSHADs. But in today's world the Murshad and the scholars try to develop their own love and obedience in the hearts of Muslims instead of Allah and His Messenger's love and obedience. The ordinary Muslim relies upon the Imams and the scholars for Islamic knowledge. If someone is trapped by those kinds of Imams and the scholars who develop their own love and obedience in the hearts of their followers, you know what is going to happen? These followers will recognize Allah and His Messenger through these Imams and scholars and they will be blind-sided. Let me share with you few examples without identifying the people.

1. There are Muslims who deny the five prayers. They pray twice a day only. They say that they are not required to fast in the month of Ramadhan. They say Hajj is not required. Why they deny the basic five pillars of Islam? The reason is their Imam said so. They believe that their Imam can even override Qur'an and the teachings of Muhammad (Peace be upon him). Although, they claim that they are Muslims but their centre of love and obedience is their Imam not Allah and His Messenger.

2. A very large group of Muslim preachers strongly believe that in today's world JIHAD is not required. If you ask them to make du'a for the freedom fighters in various parts of the world they do not make du'a for them. Why is that? Jihad is the sixth pillar of Islam. Because the spiritual leader said that the Jihad is no more a requirement and the followers have very strong bond with the spiritual leader not with Muhammad (Peace be upon him), they will listen the spiritual leader not Muhammad (Peace be upon him). These Muslims preach and practice according to a book developed by the spiritual leader of this group. If some thing is not in this book it does not exist regardless whether it exists in Qur'an or in the Sunnah of Muhammad (Peace be upon him).

3. A small group of Muslims prays ONLY behind the Imam of their own sect. They do not pray behind the Imam of other sect regardless both sects follow the same Fiqqah (Jurisprudence). They believe all the Muslims will go to hell except the people of their own sect. They claim that their hearts are filled with the love of Allah's Messenger but they hate their own Muslim brothers and sisters. They are very quick in calling Muslims as KAFIRS (non-believers) while, it is forbidden in Islam to call any Muslim a KAFIR. It is against the clear teachings of Allah's Messenger (Peace be upon him) to have jealousy and hate for any Muslim. It is against Qur'an and the Sunnah to pass judgment about Muslims. Only Allah will decide who will go to Hell. Why are they like this? Because their Murshad and Imam gave fatwa. They can not even imagine that their Murshad / Imam can make mistakes. For them, the words of Murshad are final, not the words of Allah and His Messenger (Peace be upon him).

4. A growing group among Muslims considers all Muslims BID'ATEE OR MUSHRIK OR KAFIR except their own group. They consider themselves as better Muslims and authority on Islam. The Muftis of this group forbid the celebration of Prophet Muhammad's Birthday. The founder of this group developed very sectarian beliefs. He gave a new definition to JIHAD. In his definition of JIHAD, killings of Muslims who disagree with his beliefs were permitted. That is why, the followers of this group have killed hundreds of Muslims in the name of Islam while the teachings of Muhammad (Peace be upon him) clearly says that a Muslim is a person from whose hands and tongue the other Muslims are safe. The followers of this sect are required to force their beliefs upon others. They hide and deny the high honours of Allah's Messenger, The companions and the family of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon them) have no significance for them. The Imams and the Muftis of this group twist their fatawas based upon pressure groups (government, threat of loss, etc....) The followers of this group were responsible for the destruction of Khilafatul-Islamiyah. They fought against Muslim Ottoman empire and favoured European Christian Forces. The trend still continues today. During the Gulf War, the Muftis of this group gave Fatwas to bring non-Muslim forces into Saudi Arabia.

Conclusion: If Muslims want to be respected and protected, they must not hate fellow Muslims. They must not kill or hurt any Muslim. Muslim can not be a rigid, narrow minded, fanatic and extremist. In Islam these things are considered as diseases and Islam came to cure them. Muslims must love Allah's creation. We must not change the meanings of Qur'an and the Hadith. We must not call each other BID'ATEE/ MUSHRIK/ KAFIR OR JAHANNAMI. Let's Allah decides who will go to hell or heaven. We can keep our differences but we must not impose our beliefs on others. There is a huge difference between EDUCATING and IMPOSING.

Muslims must stay away from any sect or group of people who are disrespectful towards Muhammad (Peace be upon him), the companions of Muhammad (Peace be upon him), the family of Muhammad (Peace be upon him). But at the same time do not forget to educate them. The source of unity among Muslims is Muhammad (Peace be upon him). Only his personality and his message can bring Muslims together. It looks like that the entire world has turned against Muslims. In media, Muslim and non-Muslim, most of the news items are always related to Muslims. The increased hostilities in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chchnya, Philippines, India, etc. ... is giving us a very clear message. The Muslims must unite now otherwise it will be too late for them. The chaotic situation in the Muslim world is not only putting the Muslims into danger but it is putting the entire world at risk. Why 1.6 billion Muslims are so helpless? It is very easy to blame and finger point at others but what Muslims are doing to themselves is more dangerous. Unless, internally, Muslims are strong and united, the external forces will continue crushing them. May Allah help us. Ameen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Intra-Religion Conflicts Within Muslims

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The current Muslims, especially the young generation, and the "potential new Muslims " in the western world are confused about the state of Muslim affairs. The intra-religion conflicts within the various denominations of Muslims are harming Islam. Although, Islam forbids the creation of denominations but unfortunately Muslim scholars created these denominations anyway.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The word "Hindu" is now taken to mean a person who follows what is called the Hindu religion, or Hinduism. It was not always so.

In Sanskrit (as in the earlier Indo-Aryan), "sindhu" means a large body of water and its usage is applied to rivers and oceans. The word was turned into the proper name of the largest river in the region, now called the Indus. The terms "Hind" and "al Hind" came to be applied to the Indian sub-continent - the region across the river - by Persians and Arabs starting around the 6th century BCE. The geographic name was applied to ethnicity and culture also. It had nothing to do with religion until much later.

Proponents of the "Hindu" religion, in particular those who follow the ideology of Hindutva, claim that it is the world's oldest. While it may be that the religious streams now grouped together under the rubric of Hinduism are ancient, the word "Hindu" was not applied to them until relatively recently by those who followed these religious streams or religions. In DN Jha's essay "Looking for a Hindu identity", he writes: "No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century" and "Hinduism was a creation of the colonial period and cannot lay claim to any great antiquity".

In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus.

Jha continues: "The British borrowed the word 'Hindu' from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, [and] reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism."

Well before this, Abd al-Malik Isami's Persian work, Futuhu's-salatin, composed in the Deccan in 1350, uses the word  "hindi" to mean Indian in the ethno-geographical sense and the word "hindu" to mean "Hindu" in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion". But this usage remained uncommon.
The idea of tolerance
Every religion has always been hostile to other religions. I suggest that the well known hostility between Shaivism and Vaishnavism makes them religions and not "sects", and that the distinction between these categories is without meaning.

These two dominant streams also showed hostility towards the many other religious streams that are now lumped together in "Hinduism": and of course the blood-letting between Brahmanical religions on the one hand, and Buddhism and Jainism on the other, is too well known to require a mention.

It is absurd to describe Hinduism - or any other religion - as tolerant. The statement heard throughout the world of "I shall defend my religion to the death" clearly means that if the defender does not die in the fight, the attacker will. What did the various akharas of India do if not fight to the death, and what were they if not religious?

The confounding of the geographical name "Hindostan" or "Hindustan", which is Persian in origin, with the synthetic compound "Hindu" + "sthana" is an example of how low people can stoop, whether out of ignorance or out of bloody-mindedness. The fact is that "Hindostan" was in use centuries before anyone thought to describe a religion as "Hindu".

It is a delicious irony that those who seek to defend their "Hindu dharma", primarily against Muslims, do not have the ghost of an idea that the very name of their religion came originally from a region which is now associated with Islam.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A short note on the short history of Hinduism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The word "Hindu" is now taken to mean a person who follows what is called the Hindu religion, or Hinduism. It was not always so. In Sanskrit (as in the earlier Indo-Aryan), "sindhu" means a large body of water and its usage is applied to rivers and oceans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Few divides are as impossible to bridge as those of religion. You either believe or you don't. When it comes to Islam, non-Muslims are expected to take its goodwill on faith. If you believe your eyes and ears, Islam and violence go together like peanut butter and jelly.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.nst.com.my/news/2017/02/211077/religion-not-root-cause-conflicts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hereunder are some Islamic Articles for one to read, reflect and act upon in order to increase their knowledge of Islam. Please click on a category to see the Articles contained on a particular subject.

Islamic Articles on:
Seerah of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Biographies Islamic Manners Islamic Quotes
More Islamic articles will be added as time passes, we are a relatively new site compared to some other sites on the web but visit us frequently and/or subscribe your email to be notified of any updates If you find these islamic articles of benefit, please share with others so they may too benefit from them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hereunder are some Islamic Articles for one to read, reflect and act upon in order to increase their knowledge of Islam. Please click on a category to see the Articles contained on a particular subject. Islamic Articles on: Qur'an Hadeeth Du'as Ramadan Hajj Seerah of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Biographies Marriage Stories Islamic Manners Death Students ...

# data[].attributes.body
http://blogs.prio.org/2015/04/islam-and-conflict/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The number of civil wars worldwide has fallen in recent years, but meanwhile the number of civil wars in Muslim countries is increasing.
From early on in the 21st century, we have also seen a marked growth in the number of active groups of Islamist insurgents. The media in Western countries focus strongly on terrorism and threats from the Muslim world. Are Muslim countries really more violent than others? And if they are, is it the West that is paying the price? In 2012, there were six civil wars worldwide (defining "civil war" as a conflict resulting in more than 1,000 combat-related deaths during a single calendar year). The countries affected were Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. In other words, all of these wars were in Muslim countries, and seven of the nine insurgent groups actively involved were Islamist in orientation.

More violent?

If we look at the period from the end of World War II up to the present day, Muslim countries have been no more violent than countries with non-Muslim majorities. The main reason for this is that Muslim countries have been less involved in wars between sovereign states. The wars in Korea and Vietnam accounted for the highest numbers of casualties (a total of two million deaths). Muslim countries were not involved in these wars, with the exception of Turkey, which formed part of a wider UN coalition in Korea.

Since the end of the Cold War, there have been few wars between sovereign states. The international conflict picture is now dominated by civil wars and other internal conflicts. In the course of the past 50 years, we have not seen any sharp increase in civil wars in countries with Muslim majorities. Rather, the trend has been flat with minor rises and falls. But the decrease in other types of wars, such as wars between sovereign states and civil wars in countries with non-Muslim majorities, has caused the relative proportion of wars occurring in Muslim countries to increase.

Islamist rebel groups

Although the number of conflicts in Muslim countries has not increased, there has been a clear increase in the number of conflicts involving Islamist insurgents. This trend has been particularly noticeable since 11 September 2001, and the number is now greater than at the end of the Cold War. The table above shows civil wars that are occurring either in Muslim countries or where the insurgents are Islamists, as a proportion of all civil wars in the period 1946 to 2013. We see from this table that conflicts in Muslim countries and conflicts involving Islamist insurgents make up an increasing proportion of the overall conflict picture.

Not all Muslim countries are affected by civil war

The country with the largest Muslim population in the world - Indonesia, with over 200 million Muslims - has been free of armed conflict since 2005, with no occurrences of civil war since 1981. Of the 10 countries with the largest Muslim populations in the world, only three (Pakistan, Nigeria and Iraq) were affected by civil war in 2013.
None of the other seven (Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Turkey and Algeria) has experienced civil war in the last 10 years, although three have experienced internal conflicts on a smaller scale. The three Muslim countries affected by civil war account for 18 per cent of the world's total Muslim population (according to figures from the Pew Research Center), while the other seven countries account for 49 per cent.

Victims of war

Currently the people most affected by war-related violence are those living in Muslim countries. So far the lack of information about the true situation in Syria means that the only estimate we have for combat-related deaths in 2013 so far is a so-called "low estimate" of 22,000. For other conflicts we apply a "best estimate", which in the case of Syria is expected to be a much higher figure. In addition to Syria, the long-lasting conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq account for the greatest loss of life. Recent examples are the attacks by IS on religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, and the massacre of 140 school children in Peshawar in Pakistan in December 2014. The table below shows the share of deaths in civil wars in Muslim countries between 1946 and 2013 compared to total deaths (figures from PRIO and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program). This shows that increasing numbers of conflict victims are people in Muslim countries. While there is an understandable fear of terrorism in many Western countries, the majority of combat-related deaths occur in Muslim countries among Muslims and members of religious minorities.

A Norwegian version of this text was published in the Norwegian weekly newspaper Ny Tid 1 April 2015: "Islam og konflikt"

Translation from Norwegian: Fidotext

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The number of civil wars worldwide has fallen in recent years, but meanwhile the number of civil wars in Muslim countries is increasing. From early on in the 21st century, we have also seen a marked growth in the number of active groups of Islamist insurgents.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Prime Minister Tony Blair recently described tolerance as 'what makes Britain Britain' but in this extensive investigation Dispatches reveals how a...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Of The 22 World Conflicts Around The World, 21 are Muslim..

This may sound like propaganda because it sounds so far fetched. It isn't. Check your own world almanac....

Radical Islam has spread a scourge of violence around the globe that otherwise simply wouldn't exist. It is time for the West to put an end to this horror. The first step is to destroy Iran as the world leader of Islamic violence.

As long as Iran threatens the world with nuclear Islamic fundamentalism there is simply no way to quash the continuing outbreak of Islamic violence worldwide. The Western democracies should crush the atavistic and xenophobic leader of this retreat from civilization.

If Iran is convincingly neutralized, it's possible that the rest of the radical Islamic movements will realize that the way to accomplish their aspirations is through peaceful coexistence. Otherwise the monomaniacal dream of global Islamic domination will continue to destabilize the world until an apocalyptic result ensues.

The latest catastrophic, meaningless Islamic bloodletting is occurring in Kyrgyzstan. The Russians want no part of it and won't intervene.

Who can blame them? I'm reminded of the old Texas aphorism, " You can't mess with shit without gettin' it on you. " The Russians have learned that the hard way from both Afghanistan and Bosnia.

How long will we continue to allow these murderous bullies to set back the momentumof world progress.

ENOUGH!!!

Joseph Wouk

June 12, 2010

tMUSLIM CONFLICTS AROUND THE WORLD

Current conflicts and wars: Source: http:/www.religioustolerance.org/curr_war.htm Some of the world's current "hot spots" which have as their base a significant component of religious intolerance are listed below:

Country and Main religious groups involved

1. Afghanistan Extreme radical Fundamentalist Muslim terrorist groups & non-Muslim Osama bin Laden heads a terrorist group called Al Quada (The Source) whose headquarters were in Afghanistan.

2. Bosnia Serbian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholic, Muslims

3. Cote d'Ivoire Muslims, Indigenous, Christians

4. Cyprus Christians & Muslims

5. East Timor Christians & Muslims

6. Indonesia, province of Ambon Christians & Muslims

7. Kashmir Hindus and Muslims

8. Kosovo Serbian Orthodox Christians, Muslims

9. Kurdistan Christians, Muslims Assaults on Christians (Protestant, Chaldean Catholic & Assyrian Orthodox). Bombing campaign underway.

10. Macedonia Macedonian Orthodox Christians & Muslims

11. Middle East Jews, Muslims, &Christians

12. Nigeria Christians, Animists, & Muslims

13. Pakistan Suni & Shi'ite Muslims

14. Philippines Christians & Muslims

15. Russia, Chechnya Russian Orthodox Christians, Muslims. The Russian army attacked the breakaway region. Muslims had allegedly blown up buildings in Moscow. Many atrocities have been alleged.

16. Serbia, province of Vojvodina Serbian Orthodox & Roman Catholics

17. Sri Lanka Buddhists & Hindus Tamils

Additional conflicts

19. Thailand: Pattani province: Buddists and Muslims 20. Bangladesh: Muslim-Hindu (Bengalis) and Buddists (Chakmas) 21. Tajikistan: intra-Islamic conflict

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
95% of Violent Conflicts Around The World are Muslim.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Of The 22 World Conflicts Around The World, 21 are Muslim.. This may sound like propaganda because it sounds so far fetched. It isn't. Check your own world almanac.... Radical Islam has spread a scourge of violence around the globe that otherwise simply wouldn't exist. It is time for the West to put an end...

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/378908-war-isis-mosul-iraq/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a 'suburban' or 'urban warfare,' the civilians are always the victims of so-called collateral damage. There are technological ways to discern them, but it is never going to be 100 percent urban warfare, says Paul Vallely, retired US Army Major General.

The US-backed coalition army in Mosul, Iraq has recaptured a bridge linking the liberated eastern part of the city with the Islamic State-held west.

In just under a week, more than 10,000 civilians have fled the conflict zone as Iraqi forces advance through Mosul's western districts.

The intensified fighting has led to an increasing number of casualties. At least half of the casualties are reportedly civilians as the anti-ISIS campaign moves to dense urban areas.

RT discussed the situation in and around Mosul with humanitarian and military experts.
RT: You've been to Mosul where the battle is now raging with civilians left vulnerable and exposed. What has the Iraqi government done to keep civilians out of the crossfire?
Paul Vallely: Really in a battle like that, when you're battling what we call 'suburban' or 'urban warfare,' the civilians are always the damage; that happens in any type of street fighting, block to block, building to building. It is always a tragedy. But in order to completely neutralize and defeat the ISIS forces within that urban area, this is just what happens in warfare. It is terrible, especially the women and the children and the older generation, but they are evacuating them out of Mosul as fast as they can. They've brought in a whole convoy of buses to take them to settlement or refugee camps where they will get medical treatment and so on. And the US advisers who are over there working with Iraqi forces to facilitate that, even with aircraft and helicopters to transport perhaps the most seriously injured.
RT: Most agree that a war against terror is needed but what can be done to avoid so many civilian victims while carrying out this fight? RT: An American commander on the front line near Mosul has said "It is considerably more than we thought we were going to shoot when we left Fort Hood" talking about the use of artillery. Have they underestimated the enemy? RT: Retaking Mosul is the main aim for the Iraqi troops and the US-led coalition. But when ISIL is pushed from the city, what's next? Do you think they'll just move to another part of the country, capturing more civilian areas? It is very difficult to know what happens out of Mosul, isn't it?
It is terrible, especially the women and the children and the older generation, but they are evacuating them out of Mosul as fast as they can.

PV: It is always difficult. You can use overhead surveillance. They use drones, satellites, you can actually look down and see... those civilians in the streets that are evacuating out of Mosul. And so any targeting by helicopters or aircraft, or even artillery will try to stay away and isolate that versus where the ISIS concentration of their forces may be. They are armed fighters. So there is a way to discern that to a great degree, but it is never going to be a 100 percent urban warfare, unfortunately.

PV: No, I think they've always said - at least for four to five months now, to my recollection - they knew that ISIS would be very difficult to penetrate into the urban area there, find out where they are located and basically target ISIS forces. They captured a lot of vehicles as you may remember - tanks, and armored personnel carriers in Mosul. So, they had great mobility there to move the ISIS forces around. They have already taken and neutralized eastern Mosul. Now, it is western Mosul by the airport there. And once that is done, then they will take care of all of these evacuees as best as they can.

PV: In a way, it is. But keep in mind again, we can look down and see if they are using vehicles to evacuate to other villages or towns in northern Iraq or even into Raqqa, Syria. Which is the main next target, the headquarters of ISIS, which is Raqqa. So, there are a lot of villages out there. But it is very barren country. So it is easy to target, it is easy to identify where the forces may be moving. And believe me, most of them will be using vehicles. There will be some walking, but they will be able to see them during the daylight as well as nighttime. And so we will try to track them wherever they go and take the necessary action.

'People have suffered enough'

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Shaukat Aziz said his understanding is that "the US troops in the region essentially have a peacekeeping operation."

"But obviously, if they are in danger, they need to protect themselves... the situation in Iraq is serious - it needs to be settled by dialogue. Obviously, that hasn't worked so far quite effectively. But we need to take a peaceful part to find the solution to the tension in Iraq because it is destabilizing the whole region," Aziz told RT.

"Whenever you have an intervention by any military, the desire to close and get to a solution and achieve the objectives is definitely there. That may cause things to accelerate. In the long run, this is all reason for finding peace in the country, Iraq, and bring it back to its normal life. People there have suffered enough. And I think peace is the best dividend we can give to them," he said.

'ISIS morale way down'

"We have had over 200,000 displaced people from Mosul. We were expecting even more. Prior to the operations we were thinking that it might go up to 700,000 to one million, but gladly there are less than that,"former Iraqi human rights minister, Bahtiyar Amin told RT.

"But of course, in the narrow neighborhoods of the western part of Mosul with the snipers, with creating tunnels, with all kinds of methods and strategies that ISIS has adopted, there certainly will be casualties among the civilian population, there will be sufferings, there will be displacement. But their moral is very down in ISIS: some are fleeing, some are resisting fiercely, and some divisions within ISIS has occurred between the indigenous Iraqi ISIS and also the foreign ISIS. They are from over 100 countries... committing all kinds of atrocities and crimes." Amin said.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'In the war against ISIS, the people of Mosul have suffered enough collateral damage'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a 'suburban' or 'urban warfare,' the civilians are always the victims of so-called collateral damage. There are technological ways to discern them, but it is never going to be 100 percent urban warfare, says Paul Vallely, retired US Army Major General.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Few divides are as impossible to bridge as those of religion. You either believe or you don't. When it comes to Islam, non-Muslims are expected to take its goodwill on faith. If you believe your eyes and ears, Islam and violence go together like peanut butter and jelly.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This area of the world is sizzling. And, there appears to be no end in sight. While religious-based conflict may not be the core reason for the conflicts there in every instance, it surely is, at the very least, a basic influence and a major underpinning.

The Middle East region of the world is a good example of why religious tolerance alone cannot and will not reduce religious-based conflict. To the contrary, it gives the paramount support for the Center's approach, going beyond tolerance to attack this problem.So, the world must go forward by, among other things, emphasizing education in the direction of teaching the value of finding and emphasizing those common threads of similarity of religions rather than emphasizing the differences - though they certainly exist.

Judaism versus Islam

Conflict, in which the Jews as a religious group were involved, in this part of the world, goes back more than 3,000 years, and is historically documented in the Jewish and Christian Old Testaments, among other records.

History reveals that this conflict among these Semite neighbors in the Middle East has had at its heart the overemphasis of religious differences between Islam and Judaism. Even though, until the advent of the modern country of Israel as a de jure Jewish nation in 1948, the Jews, as many other religions, had not escaped conflict and violence throughout the world from other sources as well. The establishment of Israel, however, focused back - for the first time in centuries - their conflict almost exclusively in the Middle East.

And, the cost was high for both sides. After the 1948 War, more than 700,000 Jews in 8 Arab countries were forced flee for their lives, their property ransacked, and their schools, hospitals, synagogues and cemeteries expropriated or destroyed. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were either forced from their lands after the UN founding of the state of Israel, or tragically, have remained quarantined in squalid camps sustained by UN and Arab countries' aid. Of all those countries, only one country, Jordan, has extended citizenship to the Palestinians.

While many might argue that the Arab-Israeli Wars of the latter part of the 20th century, and the subsequent unstable and violent situation have not been religious-based in nature, it appears the genesis of these conflicts was. Not seldom do initially religious-based conflicts subsequently take on a separate life of their own. Though no major Arab-Israeli wars have erupted in the last decade, there remains in the Middle East a tinder-box tension. This is particularly true since the renewal of the Israel/Palestine fighting in 2000 and again in 2014. Lives are lost almost daily - on one side, or both - and billions of dollars are spent in support of military establishments and their adventures which could otherwise have been focused on the immediate and humanitarian needs of those peoples. For instance, on the Jewish side, the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz reported that the Muslim Intifada begun in 2000 had cost Israel more than $2.4 billion in lost revenue between the period October 2000 and December 2001. Besides lost tourism, a substantial amount of this money was lost because of the number of Palestinian workers in Israel dropped from an average of 124,000 in the 3rd quarter of 2000 to only 4,000 in the final 2 quarters of 2001, likewise increasing the burden of lost income on the Muslim side.

However, the Jewish/Islamic conflict is not limited to the Middle East. In late December, 2000, two Islamic men stopped a school bus carrying 50 Jewish children between the ages of 8 and 10 at gunpoint near Paris, France, and residents of the mainly Arab suburb stoned the vehicle. It was believed that the incident was related to some 200 attacks against Jews or Jewish property by Muslims in France earlier that year in October. In fact, according to a French government report issued in early 2002, acts of violence against the Jews increased from one in 1998 to nine in 1999 to 116 in 2000. If one includes other anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from threats to arson, the numbers went from 74 in 1998 to 603 in 2000.

In early 2002 the conflict between the Jews and Muslims outside of the Middle East took a new turn for the worst. On March 30th 15 young masked Muslim immigrants in Lyons, France rammed stolen cars through a Jewish synagogue's front gate, crashing into the temple's front doors. The security guard was punched in the face and kicked in the ribs. It was one of more than 300 anti-Jewish incidents in France, home of 6 million Muslims, in a 3 week period, compared with 200 in all of 2001. Sharp increases in attacks on Jews were reported in Britain, Russia and Belgium as well. Some called this a new wave of anti-Semitism in Europe.

Later in 2002 and into 2003 the violence in the Middle East escalated sharply. There were attacks and counter attacks between the Palestinians and Israelis. Innocent men, women and children died by the hundreds on both sides. In June, 2003 at the urging of the U.S. President George W. Bush, the two sides again sat together to attempt to bring peace to the area. While this attempt showed initial short-term success, it quickly diminished again into violence.

In late 2003, suicide car bombers attacked two synagogues in downtown Istanbul, Turkey killing 23 people and injuring more than 80. One explosion went off outside the Neve Shalom Synagogue, the city's largest. The other severely damaged the Beth Israel Synagogue in the affluent district of Sisli, three miles away. This was not the first time the Neve Shalom Synagogue had been attacked. In 1986 gunmen had killed 22 worshippers and wounded 6 others during a Sabbath service there.

2012, 2013 and 2014 have not been substantially different. Continuing pressure against (not only) Israel from Iran via its surrogates Hamas and Hezbollah shows no end. The conflict Israel and the world have over the constructing new Israeli settlements on land both Israel and Palestine claim as their own remains complex and dangerous. The now more than three-year internal conflict in Syria poses potential danger to the entire Middle East area should it explode across Syrian borders. The change in governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and well as the ongoing conflict in Bahrain between the Sunni-led government and the majority Shiite citizens sees no immediate solution. These and more not only threaten general stability in the area but the existence of the state of Israel as well.

These trends, both within and without the Middle East, have not changed in recent years.

Center For Reduction of Religious-Based Conflict
649 Fifth Avenue South, Suite 201
Naples, Florida 34102-6601
USA
Email: centerrel@center2000.org
Fax: (239) 263-2824
Tel: (239) 821-4850

Copyright © 1999-2020, Center For Reduction of Religious-Based Conflict.

All rights reserved.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Current Religious-based Conflicts in the Middle East,

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This area of the world is sizzling. And, there appears to be no end in sight. While religious-based conflict may not be the core reason for the conflicts there in every instance, it surely is, at the very least, a basic influence and a major underpinning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Arab nationalism and Islamic Empire

2. Clash of civilizations

3. Arab intolerance of Christians

4. Intra-Arab conflicts

5. Contrast between Islam and Judaism

6. Other resources

Maps of Arab countries and Israel. Note that Israel is a tiny island in a sea of Arab countries.

Arab-Islamic Empire

Syrian columnist Khayri Hama:
"... the conflict with the Zionist enemy has never been a border issue, nor an interstate conflict but rather a total confrontation concerning the survival of our [Arab] nationalism . . . against threats posed by the Israeli entity."
From Syrian daily Al-Ba'th, July 26, 1994

Arab Nations frequently present the Arab-Israeli conflict as a religious conflict of the Moslems against the so called "infidel Jews". Thus, the Arab countries at war with Israel use Islamic religion as an ideology to mobilize the Arab as well as non-Arab Moslem nations against Israel.

To understand the role of religion in the Arab-Israeli conflict it is essential first to understand the expansion of the Muslim empire in recent history and its ideology and goals.

Caveat: Please note that the term Islamic-Arab has been used here to refer specifically to the new violent radical-Islam guided nationalism. In the Middle-East there used to be a sizable percentage of non-Muslim (Christian and other sects) and moderate-Islamic Arab populations. These moderate populations have been continually pushed out of the Middle East or radicalized. The best examples of these are the Lebanese Christians who have practically lost their country to radical shiite Muslims. The harsh statements used here do not apply to all Arabs of the region, but those that have been emphasized here. There are many Arabs who are fighting against the radicalization in the Arab-Islamic world. For one of the outstanding examples see Nonie Darwish and Arabs for Israel. But in our perception their influence in the Islamic world has been minimal and unfortunately they will not be able to reverse the current trends in Arab countries.

The Islam religion started with Mohammad in the 7th century, in Saudi Arabia of today. Mohammad included in Islam the idea of jihad (holy war) to spread Islam by the use of force. Islam was spread rapidly to all the Arab nations of North Africa and the Middle East (see map of Arab countries above). Islam religion in the hands of the Arab nations has turned into a tool of Arab nationalism and xenophobia ( see over a million pages in the internet on the subject of Islam and Arab Nationalism).

In the past five centuries, many non-Arab nations have adopted Islam as the official state religion. These countries extend from Mauritania, at the Atlantic Ocean edge of Africa, to Indonesia in the Pacific Ocean. In some respects, Islamic countries today represent an empire, extending across many nations over the vastest tract of land ever ruled by a single empire in the world.

According to Islam, the Caliph is the religious and government authority that rules the Muslim empire. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, the Caliph assumed his authority which was later transferred among different Islamic dynasties. The title of the Caliph was held by the Ottoman sultans from 1517 until 1924. The Caliphate institution was abolished by Ataturk who established the modern Turkey as a secular Western looking state.

Many Islamist groups already declare that their aim is to re-establish one Muslim Nation (Islamic ummah) encompassing all Muslim nations, ruled by Islamic law replacing secular governments. Many Arab, as well as non-Arab countries, such as Iran and Afganisthan are examples of this trend. The mass demonstrations of support for Osama bin Laden in many Arab countries are popular expressions of support for this wish for global Islamic unity.

In historical perspective, the wish of Islamists for global rule is reminiscent of the communist ideology to establish a "world nation of proletariat" (the communist slogan was "Workers of the world unite!"). It is significant that at the peak of the power of the USSR empire, the Arab countries were strong natural allies of the USSR against the West.

Like any ideology that wishes to establish a totalitarian global rule, Islamic Arab-fundamentalism presents a serious threat to the community of nations, including the non-Arab Muslim nations, such as Turkish republics.

While the role of Christianity as a force in shaping International affairs has decreased, the role of Islamic Empire in shaping International affairs has greatly increased as a result of several factors:

Expansion of the Islamic Empire as noted above

Strong Arab electorates in European capitals formed by Arabs who emigrated mostly from North Africa (over 6 million Arabs in France alone)

The need to appease Arabs because of their financial power and control of global petrol prices

Combination of age-old anti-Semitism (remember European collaboration with Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews!) with Arab interests in the Middle against Israel

Clash of civilizations

Islamic countries have stagnated economically for centuries. Arab countries with the world's richest resources have not been able to use their financial power for constructive development of their countries and have failed to advance their societies. All Arab countries are ruled as monarchies or as undemocratic regimes with very poor standards of living ( see Table). Science and technology levels remain virtually undeveloped in most Arab countries.

With the advances in modern technology, the gap between the Western world and the Islamic countries has been widening. This poses a dilemma for Islamic radicals who view Islamic religion requiring divine world dominance and conquest. To compensate, Arab-Muslim clerics relate to the western world -- with its successes in technology, and its failures in some social moral standards -- as a real enemy of Islam and Muslims.

U.S.A., as a leader of the Western civilization has been dubbed as "the Great Satan" by none other than the political leader of Iran, a major Islamic country.

In the face of the vast differences between the Western civilization and the Arab culture, radical Islamic fractions within Arab countries have developed a new religious philosophy for the destruction of the Western culture by acts of terrorism. These acts are committed by suicide terrorists who receive the honor of "shahid" with the promise of eternal life in heaven. The most recent example is the attack on America by suicide crews that have led to the deaths of thousands. The identified participants of September 11 terrorism are all Arabs mostly from Saudi Arabia ( see ABC NEWS story on suspects). While the world remained indifferent to suicide terrorists in Israel, the world was awakened by the attacks in the US to the dangers of radical Islam.

These events have been called part of a modern " clash of civilizations" between the radical Arab-Islam and the Western world. Yet, they could be foreboded by recent events in the Middle East. It is absolutely wrong to consider the recent acts of terrorism as the action of a few radicals such as Osama Bin-Laden. The acts grow on a very fertile ground of Arab national radical and violent philosophies presenting themselves as modern versions of jihad.

Israel stands at the forefront of this modern clash of civilizations as the only country that represents the Western world in the Middle East. In contrast to World War II times, now the Jewish people are not just the victims but also the frontline fighters against these evil forces that threaten the human civilization. Brutal killings of civilians by Islamic-Arab suicide bombers, and terrorists in Israel are nowadays almost a daily occurrence, and are executed in the name of "Allah" with the blessing "Allahu-Akbar" (God is great)! Many Islamic-Arab parents train their youth already at an early age for suicide terrorism ( see Education section and Articles section). In this atmosphere, killing of non-Muslim non-believers has become a social norm that threatens to throw the humanity back to the darkest days of barbaric cultures. Yet, in the modern age the consequences will be much more severe. If weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of evil forces of terrorism they will threaten mass decimation.

Islamic-Arab intolerance of Christians

The Islamic-Arab intolerance against non-Moslems is not limited to Jews (see: Islamic-Arab Persecution of Christians). Throughout centuries Arabs have systematically persecuted and ousted both Christians and Jews. The sizable Christian communities in Arab countries have dwindled to insignificant numbers with the mass emigration of Christians. The Jewish refugees from Arab countries were mostly absorbed by the modern State of Israel, whereas the Christians have emigrated to Europe and America

Also see:

Intra-Arab conflicts

The Arab-Muslim religious philosophy of Jihad, of forceful conquest and conversion finds its violent expression also in intra-Arabic conflicts. The fact is that the number of Arabs killed in armed conflict is much greater in wars among Arab-Muslim factions, than in wars against Israel. For example, the number of dead (mostly youth and children) in the Iran-Iraq war is estimated at over 1,500,000 ( see Google search). Similarly, the number of dead in Iraq's war against Kuwait is also estimated at greater than 100,000.

The recent civil war and fighting between different factions in Iraq are most outstanding examples of extremely violent intra-Arab conflicts with almost daily suicide killings.

The word "assassin" originates from a "secret Islamic order originating in the 11th century who believed it was a religious duty to harass and murder their enemies." (source: The American Heritage Dictionary)

Also see:

Contrast between Islam and Jewish values

In contrast to Islam, the Jewish beliefs and traditions are associated specifically with the Jewish People. Judaism strongly opposes forced conversions of other nations. The Old Testament Torah delineates the Land of Israel where the Jewish people lived ( see map at the time of King David and Solomon). Israel does not seek expansion beyond the Land of Israel. Israel has withdrawn its army from territories captured after each war (for example giving up all of Sinai peninsula).

The use of Islamic religion to encourage suicide bombers with the promise of heavenly life with virgins, illustrates the great gap between Islam and Jewish beliefs. The Hebrew Bible prohibits killing in the Ten Commandments and completely rejects and deplores suicide. But Judaism also states that "If one comes to slay you, slay him first" (Brachot, 58). This phrase is a relevant moral guide for dealing with the modern day terrorists.

There are many examples in history where Jews lived in relative harmony over hundreds of years with non-Arab Moslem nations ( see a brief history of Turkish Jews as one example). So, when Islam is not shaped by violent Arab nationalism, good human neighborly relations with mutual respect are possible between Jews and other non-Arab Moslem nations.

The rise of Israel is seen as a threat by many believers in Islam. Yet, Judaism should be seen for what it really is: the first monotheistic religion that led to the birth of other monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. It is our hope that the shared belief in one monotheistic God will provide the common ground for mutual understanding and respect, if not now then in the future.

Other resources:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Arab-Israeli conflict - Role of religion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Arab nationalism and Islamic Empire Clash of civilizations Arab intolerance of Christians Intra-Arab conflicts Contrast between Islam and Judaism Other resources Maps of Arab countries and Israel. Note that Israel is a tiny island in a sea of Arab countries. Syrian columnist Khayri Hama: "...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sunni Muslims make up 85% of the Islamic world; the Shiites, only 15%. But the 15% of Shiites are concentrated in the Persian Gulf, where the oil is. That's the key to understanding the war that is coming against Iran and the war that is going to return the fanatic Shiites to Sunni subjugation.

First we have to go back to the Prophet Muhammad. When he died in 632, his followers couldn't agree on whether to choose bloodline successors or leaders most likely to follow the tenets of the faith. So, two groups emerged: the Sunnis chose Abu Bakr, the prophet's adviser, to become the first successor, or caliph, to lead the Muslim state. The Shiites went with bloodline and chose Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law. In 656, Ali's supporters killed the third caliph of the Sunnis. Soon after, the Sunnis killed Ali's son Husain. Fighting continued, but the Sunnis emerged victorious over the Shiites.

Now, fast forward to 1979. For almost 1300 years, almost nothing was heard about the Shiites. They were there, only 15% of the Islamic population, but they were basically disregarded by everybody else. In 1927, a number of things in history changed all that.

The big hero of Shiite Islam is Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter did not like the Shah of Iran. Shah Reza Pahlavi was a man who suppressed Islam. In that way, he was like Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, who strove to make his country secular. And because Shiite Islam was the Islam of Iran, the Shah suppressed Shiites.

President Jimmy Carter also did not like the Shah of Iran because he was a dictator. In the Middle East there is no democracy. So, if there is no democracy and you are the ruler, you are a dictator. The Iranian Secret Service ruthlessly suppressed the fanatic Muslims in Iran. Jimmy Carter didn't like human rights violations, so he decided to bring down the Shah. Jimmy Carter is and was a religious man, and he heard about another religious man named Ayatollah Khomeini.

Why did Jimmy Carter, the religious Christian, choose Ayatollah Khomeini? Because Ayatollah was also a religious man. And, of course, if you are a religious Christian, that's the same as being a religious Muslim, isn't it?

Well, the first thing that Ayatollah Khomeini did was take the U.S. diplomats hostage in the embassy in Tehran. All of a sudden, Shiite Iran comes into full bloom, into full resurgence, into full renaissance. The Shiites see a new vindication in the rise of their system, and the Shiites are not just happy about having Iran; the Shiites look to the persecuted Shiites everywhere else.

Iranians have a territorial strategy called the "Shiite Crescent." The first country of the Shiite Crescent was Iran. Who created it? Jimmy Carter turned Iran into a fanatic Islamic malignant growth, which is now metastasizing and spreading its tentacles to other countries with Shiite populations.

Like Iraq. Iraq borders Iran and 60% of the population is Shiite. George W. Bush did the right thing by removing Saddam Hussein, but let's stop and pause for a moment and think like Shiite Muslims. In Iraq, 60% are Shiites. But did the Shiites ever rule Iraq? No, it was always the Sunnis. And, in fact, Saddam Hussein represented only a part of the Sunnis, the Arab Sunnis which were 20% of the population. With the U.S. promoting a representative government, the Shiites will have the ruling majority.

The Sunnis have had control for 1300 years. Now all of a sudden the hand of the Shiites is raised. This is a revolution in Islamic thinking. The Shiites have a Messianic dream of defeating the Sunnis. They feel they must overthrow the Sunni kingdom so that they will have true Orthodox Islam-the family of Mohammed should be ruling Mecca and Medina.

Yet, next month I will lay out three possible scenarios; all three of them will lead to the suppression of Shiite Islam. For more information see my newest briefing, Shiite/Sunni: The Two Houses of Islam.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sunnis and Shiites: Conflict Within Islam: - by Avi Lipkin - Koinonia House

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sunni Muslims make up 85% of the Islamic world; the Shiites, only 15%. But the 15% of Shiites are concentrated in the Persian Gulf, where the oil is. That's the key to understanding the war that is coming against Iran and the war that is going to return the fanatic Shiites to Sunni subjugation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since the Iraq War, sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis has emerged as a major fissure in Middle East politics - fueling conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; a resurgence of extremism and the scourge of the Islamic State; and an escalation in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia which has become the most significant clash between regional rivals in decades. From country to country, across the region, sectarian conflict is the thread that runs through each crisis, tying them into a strategic Gordian knot.

The common refrain in the West is that this is a 14-century-old feud we don't understand. Even U.S. President Barack Obama said as much in his final State of the Union, calling the Middle East a place "rooted in conflicts that date back millennia." The not-so-subtle implication, of course, is that this is the kind of religious politics the West has long left behind. It is true that Shiite and Sunni identities were formed centuries ago over a religious dispute. It is also true that Shiite-Sunni clashes are nothing new. But sectarianism should not be dismissed out of hand as an ancient feud that defies modern logic. The violent paroxysm in today's Middle East is a modern phenomenon, a product of contemporary politics and priorities. Furthermore, it is playing out not in obscure theological forums but in the political arena.

Sectarianism today is a perfect storm - the product of a confluence of factors at play in the region. The first culprit in stoking sectarian conflict is Islamism. This modern-day ideology, born in the 1930s, calls for an ideal Islamic state built on the foundations of Islamic law and sharia. The Islamic state is a utopian panacea that looks to religion to perfect modernity. But the Islamic state is not a generic idea, as it requires harkening to either Shiite or Sunni conceptions of Islam.

Shiites and Sunnis each have their own methodology, interpretation, and practice of law. As such, there can be no such thing as a non-sectarian Islamic state. In a region in which Islam matters so much to politics, it is inevitable that the critical question then becomes "what Islam" and "whose Islam." The rise of narrower and more extreme forms of Islamism have only exacerbated sectarianism.

The founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, learned this lesson the hard way. He fashioned himself as a pan-Islamic leader but was dismissed by a growing number of Sunnis as a Shiite cleric. He may have garnered political respect, particularly in standing up to the United States, but few Sunnis accepted him as their religious pole. While Shiites across the region were filled with pride and hope, Sunni Arab rulers looked for ways to quash expectations of change. Iraq's Saddam Hussein famously responded to the revolution's challenge by purging Shiites from the ranks of the Baath Party and putting to death the eminent Shiite cleric, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, then-President Zia ul-Haq also began to play politics with Islam, imposing a mandatory religious tax. But, emboldened by the Iranian revolution, Pakistan's Shiites asserted their sectarian independence, refusing to submit to that country's experiment with Islamic statehood. Zia soon capitulated, but resentful Sunnis recoiled at this diminution and started sectarian clashes and violence that has beleaguered the country to this day.

Iranians were always at a disadvantage exporting their revolution to Arabs or Pakistanis, but the true firewall that kept Iran's revolution at bay was sectarianism. Pakistan was an early target. The country's Shiites embraced Khomeini's message, but Sunni extremism backed by both Pakistan's government and Saudi Arabia stopped Tehran in its tracks. The revolution's influence quickly waned - but not Sunni extremism and its culture of sectarianism. And what started in Pakistan is now unfolding in the Middle East. Iran's revolution ensconced Islam in regional politics and, along with it, underscored sectarian fealties that divide the region.

Greater prominence of sectarianism, as Saddam well understood, exposed the imbalances between Sunnis and Shiites that lay at the heart of many Arab states, from Syria to Iraq to Bahrain. In majority Sunni Syria, an Alawite minority with distant roots in Shiism ruled. In Iraq and Bahrain, minority Sunni Arabs lorded over the majority Shiites. This sectarian domination of power was a vestige of colonialism, which lived on through secular nationalist states. Years of state-building only masked the problem by harping on Arab nationalism and the fight against Israel and the West. But the facades soon started to crumble.

Starved of legitimacy, facing population growth and economic stagnation, the Middle East's sclerotic dictatorships succumbed to callous divide-and-rule strategies. Syria and Iraq may have been secular Baathist states, but ideology did not make for a level playing field; minority Alawites ruled over largely Sunni Syria and minority Sunnis over largely Shiite Iraq. For a while, these majority populations were quiescent, held in check by the promise of patronage and threat of violence.

Then came the American occupation of Iraq and the Arab Spring - a one-two punch that broke the Arab order. The state shattering lifted the veil to expose the sectarianism that was frozen at the heart of these states, which provided the competing sects with incentive to fight over the spoils. Shiites in Iraq and Bahrain, and Sunnis in Syria, welcomed the promise of change. But not so their Sunni and Alawite compatriots who stood to lose power - and face retribution.

Since the Iraq War, sectarian interests have come to dominate the political discourse in the region, as a chain of events has replicated the competition that started in Iraq in 2003. At the height of the Arab Spring in 2011, public opinion in the region was divided over which crisis was more important and which suppression of dissent a greater travesty. Sunnis in Cairo and Riyadh were up in arms over the butchery unfolding in Syria, while Shiites in Baghdad and Tehran decried the violent quelling of protest in Bahrain. Even in nominally secular Turkey, sectarian fissures surfaced as the country's majority Sunnis sympathized with Syria's opposition and the minority Alevis (distantly related to Shiism) with Syria's Alawite regime.

Little surprise then that rulers looked to sectarianism to defeat popular demands for change. Manipulating sectarian interests divided opposition movements and shattered the hope for cosmopolitan politics, separating Alawites from Sunnis in Syria, and Sunnis from Shiites in Bahrain and Iraq. In every case, the ruling regime was successful in garnering sectarian support, at home and in the region. But, of course, this strategy of survival came at a high cost.

Whereas Bahrain successfully snuffed out its Shiite-led opposition movement, Syria and Iraq collapsed into civil war, which in turn paved the way for the rise of the Islamic State - a violent sectarian army that has fashioned itself as the sword of the Sunnis pointed at the heart of the Shiite world and the West.

The changing sectarian landscape is happening in the context of an intense great-power rivalry in the Middle East, of the kind that once raged in Europe. American insouciance toward the region, combined with the collapse of the Arab order, has pitted the region's main actors - Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey - against one another. Each is rushing to protect its equities and further its interests in the vacuum of power that has emerged across the Middle East. Saudi leaders say that two things they won't compromise on are their faith and their security. The first they aver is threatened by Shiism, the second by Iran.

The nuclear deal only added fuel to the fire. Saudi Arabia interpreted the agreement as an American tilt toward Iran - one that would not only bring gains to Tehran, but also to the Shiite side of the ledger in the Middle East. Hence Sunnis have had to redouble their efforts to block Shiite gains. Saudi Arabia's foreign policy has become more confrontational since the Iran nuclear deal, emphasizing the sectarian divide. Rising tensions have been playing themselves out in clashes over the future of Syria; the execution of Saudi dissident cleric Nimr al-Nimr; and in the escalation of the civil war in Yemen.

Both sides in this conflict are now stuck in a zero-sum sectarian battle, having mobilized their masses with religious fervor. But the numbers game favors Sunnis, and the sectarian fervor has rallied tens of millions to Saudi Arabia's side, winning domestic favor for the monarchy in leading the fight against Iran and its Shiite allies.

Sectarian interests are now too tightly interwoven with regional politics high and low to subside anytime soon. Both Shiite and Sunni leaders see political interests in exploiting this divide, taking advantage of anxieties on the ground to defend their rule and protect their interests. This is a replay of nationalist politics of the kind familiar to the West, during the prelude to World War I or, more recently, in the Balkans. That history does not bode well. There is no true effort among the Middle East's rulers to close the divide, heal the wounds, and put forth a shared vision of an inclusive future. So all that is left is a winner-takes-all scramble.

Iran and Saudi Arabia will not go to war directly, but they will continue to fight in every theater of conflict in the region to protect and further their interests - and those opportunities are only proliferating. Neither side thinks it can afford to lose, and gain is measured by giving its adversary a black eye. Victory in one conflict by one side will only encourage the other to compensate by getting the upper hand elsewhere. Iran has won Iraq and now (to Saudi eyes) looks to be also winning over Washington. Riyadh may have intervened to stop Tehran's influence in Bahrain, but not so in Syria - which in turn has led to Saudi intervention in Yemen.

One might hope that the cost of confrontation will soon exhaust the regional rivals. Both countries face serious economic problems, and their energies are better spent on domestic reform than on regional confrontation. But neither side looks ready to entertain that wisdom. Each thinks it can win the region - or at least, improve its position before settling for a new equilibrium.

The West's focus in the Middle East is, for now, on the Islamic State and the war in Syria. But that's just a slice of the wider conflict. Even a successful end to the war in Syria would not end the Saudi-Iranian rivalry or bridge the sectarian divide. Moreover, the United States needs close cooperation with Shiite Iraq and Iran to defeat the Islamic State, which would only unsettle Riyadh. Peace talks in Vienna are approaching, but it is difficult to see how either Washington or Moscow could overcome Saudi Arabia's uncompromising mood to get to a diplomatic settlement in Syria. A stable Yemen is an even more distant prospect. Without regional consensus supporting the peace, sectarian tensions lying just below the surface could ignite new conflagrations.

So where will this end? The Middle East needs a new order. But the fundamentals in the region have changed. Shiites have again found their voice and are claiming their place in regional politics. The wall of containment keeping Iran out of the region has broken down - it appears, with American acquiescence. Saudi Arabia and many Sunnis yearn for the pre-2003 Middle East, but it is time to adjust to the new reality: a Middle East that is more Shiite, with greater Iranian say in its affairs. Not until the region comes to terms with this new political equilibrium will there be peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And only then can we talk about tamping the fires of sectarianism.

MOHAMMED SAWAF/AFP/Getty Images

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since the Iraq War, sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis has emerged as a major fissure in Middle East politics - fueling conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; a resurgence of extremism and the scourge of the Islamic State; and an escalation in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia which has become the most significant clash between regional rivals in decades.

# data[].attributes.body
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/16/are-muslim-countries-more-violent/

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.eurasiareview.com/15122015-the-rise-of-buddhist-muslim-conflict-in-asia-and-possibilities-for-transformation-analysis/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Iselin Frydenlund*

Violence against Muslim minorities in Buddhist societies has increased in recent years.

The Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar are disenfranchised, and many of their candidates were rejected by the official Union Election Commission prior to the 2015 elections. Furthermore laws about religious conversion, missionary activities, and interfaith marriage are being promoted to control relations between religions and prevent conflict. The danger, however, is that increased control will lead to more, not fewer, conflicts.

Discrimination against religious minorities may lead to radicalisation. In addition minority-majority relations in a single state may have regional consequences because a minority in one state can be the majority in another, and there is an increasing trend for co-religionists in different countries to support each other. Thus protection of religious minorities is not only a question of freedom of religion and basic human rights; it also affects security and peacebuilding in the whole region. Anti-Muslim violence and political exclusion of Muslim minorities take place in the wake of increased Buddhist nationalism. This policy brief identifies local as well as global drivers for Buddhist-Muslim conflict and the rise of Buddhist nationalism. It then shows how Buddhist-Muslim conflict can be addressed, most importantly through the engagement of local religious leaders.

Introduction

Attacks on Muslim minorities in Buddhist countries have escalated in recent years (OHCHR, 2014). Following repeated waves of violence in 2012, 140,000 Muslim Rohingyas are still living in desperate conditions in camps in Rakhine State in Myanmar (International Crisis Group, 2013). The violence in Rakhine has spread to other parts of Myanmar, including Meikthila, which faced severe Buddhist-Muslim violence in 2013. The same period also witnessed several serious attacks on Muslim minorities in Sri Lanka. The region's most deadly conflict at the moment is in Southern Thailand, also characterised by divisions between Muslims and Buddhists. While the conflict drivers are different in Southern Thailand, the conflict seems to assume a stronger religious identification than before, feeding radical Buddhist nationalism in the region.

Contrary to what is often presented in international news, anti-Muslim attacks do not mean that Muslims living in Buddhist countries are generally at risk of persecution. But weak state protection of Muslim communities leaves these communities at risk of violence and intimidation when other groups in society see benefits from starting a conflict. While identifying the perpetrators has been difficult, two things remain clear: the attacks take place in an atmosphere of strong anti-Muslim rhetoric from certain Buddhist monk-led nationalist groups, and orchestrators and perpetrators of violent attacks operate with impunity.

This report analyses local and regional drivers of Buddhist-Muslim conflict, with a special emphasis on Buddhist nationalism. The report is based on direct experiences in religious peace activities in the region during 2014-2015, and on three public seminars on various aspects of Buddhism and conflict in south and south-east Asia.1

Buddhism, state, and conflict in south and south-east Asia

Buddhism's close relations with the state have made Buddhism an ally with modern ethno-nationalism. Buddhism is identified with the majority ethnic group to the extent that religious minority identities are often represented as non-national. Thus the dark side of Buddhist political paradigms is the potential exclusion of ethnic and religious minorities, and hence the possibility of increased insecurity. The escalating religious intolerance constitutes a serious threat to local communities, which in turn may represent a threat to the states themselves. Radical Buddhist groups today present a narrative of an inherent Buddhist-Muslim conflict, which excludes narratives of co-existence, tolerance, and inclusion. The strong evidence of peaceful coexistence between various religious communities throughout Asia suggests that religious difference per se does not lead to conflict. Thus under what circumstances is religious difference made socially and politically relevant? Or put differently, why do radical Buddhist groups just now perceive Islam as a great threat to Buddhism?

New forms of Buddhist nationalism

Anti-Muslim violence has taken place in the wake of the formation of two particularly vociferous groups in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, the 969 (together with MaBaTha)2 and the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), respectively. Both groups were formed in 2012 and have since then made global headlines for their militant anti-Muslim rhetoric. While BBS and 969 are far from identical and formed in different political contexts, these new - and radical - political Buddhist associations share similar traits, namely fear of the extinction of their races and religion, the perception of Islam, especially Salafism and Muslim violent extremism, as an imminent threat, and new legal regulations to prevent "Islamisation". Moreover these groups represent a novelty in that they transcend the nation-state's boundaries. The early stages of this process are tied to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by BBS and 969 in Colombo in 2014. The future strength of these collaborative efforts is still unclear, but the MoU's signing indicates a stronger recognition of shared Buddhist political interests across the region.

As long as the state is considered legitimate and thus a tool for "Buddhicising" society, Buddhist pressure groups will work to reform the state rather than violently oppose it. Thus there are few examples of Buddhist "fundamentalist" violence against the state or threats to public security. However, radical Buddhist political groups may present a threat to social stability because they fuel and sharpen religious divisions.

Central to Buddhist radicalism is the idea that Buddhists are "hosts" while Muslims are "guests" accredited with
limited minority rights in a Buddhist majoritarian political model. While this vision of citizenship limits the scope for real democratic change, such notions also neglect the fact that Muslims have for centuries been living within Buddhist polities.

The Rakhine State in Myanmar, which borders the populous Muslim state of Bangladesh, is glossed as a "frontier state" between Buddhist and Muslim worlds, ignoring local co-existence in pre-British times. Moreover the 969/MaBaTha concern for Rakhine conflates Arakanese and Burmese Buddhist nationalisms, ignoring centuries-old Arakanese Buddhist resistance to Burmese Buddhist rule. In this respect ethnic difference among Buddhists in Myanmar is downplayed while boundaries based on religious difference are intensified.

Buddhist nationalism in local politics

Anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence serves national-level political interests. The "evil state" is commonly seen as the source of anti-Muslim attacks, implying politically orchestrated violence between different religious communities. This violence benefits authoritarian regimes by giving them an excuse for curfews or even military intervention. Furthermore political parties deliberately use Buddhist concerns and hate speech against religious minorities to gain votes among religious majorities. Such processes were discernible in Myanmar prior to the 2015 elections. The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) formed various alliances with monks and strongly backed the laws "to protect race and religion". USDP politicians likewise donated large sums to high-ranking 969/MaBaTha monks during the election campaign, while MaBaTha circulated flyers encouraging voters to vote for parties (most importantly the USDP) that supported the laws
"to protect race and religion".3

In fact there are strong connections between authoritarian regimes and radical Buddhist groups. In Myanmar, the emergence of radical Buddhist groups can be linked to the military's strategic moves after the 1988 crackdown. To build up its "Buddhist capital" and legitimacy, the regime increasingly sponsored the Buddhist cause by co-opting key Buddhist monks. The authoritarian Rajapaksa regime (2005-2015) in Sri Lanka built its legitimacy around victory in the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009) under the banner of Buddhist nationalism. Buttressed by the regime's protective wings, various Buddhist nationalist groups came into being - and thrived. BBS in particular is far more militant in its anti-Muslim rhetoric than previous manifestations of Buddhist nationalism and has been accused of playing a role in instigating anti-Muslim violence in 2014. In June 2015 BBS decided to form its own political party and run for elections in August 2015, which could be read as a move to support ex-president Rajapaksa's (failed) return to national politics.

The Buddhist fear of Islam: regional and global drivers

While the local political context is of paramount importance for understanding the new forms of political Buddhism, so too are the global processes that inform the discursive strategies and practices of these movements. Two global discourses stand out as especially important: securitisation of Islam and the expected global rise in the Muslim population.

Fuelled by new forms of communication, worldwide concerns over the rise of global jihadism, and the subsequent securitisation of Islam, local Muslims in Buddhist societies are increasingly portrayed as a threat to national security. Muslim associations are seen as representatives of international terrorist networks and local agents of Islamic global imperialism. Leading monks have called mosques "enemy bases", and they have identified the niqab as a direct threat to the state and its territory.

Radical political Buddhism has garnered unexpected support by successfully interweaving local concerns with international alarmism. Such global concerns are reproduced to fit local-level social and political contexts. In post-war Sri Lanka, Islam fills an ideological vacuum in Sinhala nationalism after the defeat of the Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.

From this perspective Islam has replaced LTTE as the significant "Other" in Sinhala nationalist ideology. Moreover global discourses on terror seem to be a convenient myth in local competition for power and resources. For example Rohingya militant groups in Rakhine are accused of international jihadist connections, even though Rohingya militancy rather must be understood in the local context of ethnic minority resistance to internal Burmese colonialism and state repression.

Changing global demographics and the expected worldwide increase in the Muslim population is perceived as an existential threat to Buddhism. To prevent "Buddhists from becoming a minority in their own country", radical Buddhists call for family planning policies, including legal regulation of women's reproductive health. BBS leaders have demanded a government shutdown of all family planning units so that Sinhala women could produce more babies. Radical Buddhist groups are particularly concerned with sexuality and reproduction, and following familiar Islamophobic tropes in Europe and India, Muslim male sexuality is portrayed as aggressive and uncontrollable; Muslim men are accused of raping Burmese Buddhist women. In Sri Lanka, spurious allegations have surfaced accusing Muslim shopkeepers of distributing sweets containing sterilising medicaments to Sinhala Buddhist women. This has spurred nationalist calls for "protecting local Buddhist woman" against "the male Muslim intruder". In Myanmar, the four laws "to protect race and religion" aim to prevent "Islamisation" by regulating conversion, interreligious marriages, and family planning, and by banning polygamy and extra-marital affairs.

The laws are designed to counter Muslim practices that (allegedly) increase the size of the Muslim population.

Possibilities for transformation

What we see are both stronger attachments to Buddhist identity vis-à-vis other religions, as well as a new regional concern about religious minorities and majorities in Asia. Leading Buddhist monks focus on the situation for minority Buddhists in Muslim majority societies like Bangladesh, Southern Thailand, and Malaysia.

But this same sense of broader connectivity also fuels religious peace initiatives across the region. The rising levels of hate speech by religious leaders, new forms of religious intolerance, and growing instances of Buddhist-Muslim violence are met with great concern, not only by international actors but more importantly by local civil society organisations and religious leaders themselves. While not denying the importance of international engagement, discussions on issues like inter-communal violence, the place of religion in the public sphere, or legitimate or illegitimate restrictions on freedom of religion or belief must be addressed within the religious communities themselves. Statements crafted by local religious leaders and endorsed by several authoritative Buddhist and Muslim organisations carry much more weight than any human rights group's condemnation of the role of religious leaders in creating intolerance and mistrust.

Engaging religious leaders is paramount in these deeply religious societies because they can challenge exclusivist discourses by pointing at diverse interpretations of how one is to protect Buddhism in a way that does not foster communal conflict. This requires an intra-Buddhist debate on Buddhist principles, religious pluralism, and human rights. Moreover religious peace initiatives might offer alternative spaces for cooperation between religious communities, for example through a shared interest for the common good.

"Religious peacebuilding" is vague and often romanticised. There are many pitfalls to be recognised: the religious leaders' limited impact on their communities, their lack of independence from the state, and the danger of top-level talk with little impact on local realities. However, the rising levels of religious tension require the engagement of religious actors, unless exclusivist ideologies, intolerance, and violence are to win.

About the author:
*Iselin Frydenlund is senior researcher at PRIO. Her research interests include the role of religion in war and peace, suicide terrorism, interreligious dialogue in its various forms, and freedom of religion or belief. She has written extensively on Buddhism and violence and works specifically on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. She is also research fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, where she leads a project on legislation of religion in Myanmar.

Source:
This article was published by NOREF as Policy Brief 2015 (PDF)

The content of this publication is presented as is. The stated points of view are those of the author and do not reflect those of the organisation for which she works or NOREF.

References
International Crisis Group. 2013. The dark side of transition: violence against Muslims in Myanmar. Asia Report no. 251. ‹http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/251-the-dark-side-of-transition-violence- against-muslims-in-myanmar.aspx›

OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights). 2014. "Stop the promotion of hatred and faith- based violence: UN rights experts urge Sri Lanka." United Nations. July 2nd. ‹http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/ Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14812&›

Notes:
1. See PRIO's website for more information: https://www.prio.org/Projects/Project/?x=1129.
2. Referred to by its Burmese acronym "MaBaTha", the Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion has since 2014 more or less eclipsed 969 and included the 969 monks within its fold.
3. For more details on the role of Buddhist monks in the Myanmar elections, see Iselin Frydenlund, "Are Myanmar's monks hindering democratisation?", East Asia Forum:

Please Donate Today Did you enjoy this article? Then please consider donating today to ensure that Eurasia Review can continue to be able to provide similar content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Rise Of Buddhist-Muslim Conflict In Asia And Possibilities For Transformation - Analysis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Iselin Frydenlund* Violence against Muslim minorities in Buddhist societies has increased in recent years. The Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar are disenfranchised, and many of their candidates were rejected by the official Union Election Commission prior to the 2015 elections.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/223841/islams-religious-war-everyone-daniel-greenfield

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/223841/islams-religious-war-everyone-daniel-greenfield

# data[].attributes.headline
Monica Krutis: Conflict between Buddihism and Islam

# data[].attributes.subject
Monica Krutis: Conflict between Buddihism and Islam

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22356306

# data[].attributes.headline
Monica Krutis: Conflict between Hinduism and Islam

# data[].attributes.subject
Monica Krutis: Conflict between Hinduism and Islam

# data[].attributes.body
https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/war_peace/confrontation/hintervention.html

# data[].attributes.body
www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict/Arab-islamic-empire.php

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/223841/islams-religious-war-everyone-daniel-greenfield

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sunni Muslims make up 85% of the Islamic world; the Shiites, only 15%. But the 15% of Shiites are concentrated in the Persian Gulf, where the oil is. That's the key to understanding the war that is coming against Iran and the war that is going to return the fanatic Shiites to Sunni subjugation.

First we have to go back to the Prophet Muhammad. When he died in 632, his followers couldn't agree on whether to choose bloodline successors or leaders most likely to follow the tenets of the faith. So, two groups emerged: the Sunnis chose Abu Bakr, the prophet's adviser, to become the first successor, or caliph, to lead the Muslim state. The Shiites went with bloodline and chose Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law. In 656, Ali's supporters killed the third caliph of the Sunnis. Soon after, the Sunnis killed Ali's son Husain. Fighting continued, but the Sunnis emerged victorious over the Shiites.

Now, fast forward to 1979. For almost 1300 years, almost nothing was heard about the Shiites. They were there, only 15% of the Islamic population, but they were basically disregarded by everybody else. In 1927, a number of things in history changed all that.

The big hero of Shiite Islam is Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter did not like the Shah of Iran. Shah Reza Pahlavi was a man who suppressed Islam. In that way, he was like Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, who strove to make his country secular. And because Shiite Islam was the Islam of Iran, the Shah suppressed Shiites.

President Jimmy Carter also did not like the Shah of Iran because he was a dictator. In the Middle East there is no democracy. So, if there is no democracy and you are the ruler, you are a dictator. The Iranian Secret Service ruthlessly suppressed the fanatic Muslims in Iran. Jimmy Carter didn't like human rights violations, so he decided to bring down the Shah. Jimmy Carter is and was a religious man, and he heard about another religious man named Ayatollah Khomeini.

Why did Jimmy Carter, the religious Christian, choose Ayatollah Khomeini? Because Ayatollah was also a religious man. And, of course, if you are a religious Christian, that's the same as being a religious Muslim, isn't it?

Well, the first thing that Ayatollah Khomeini did was take the U.S. diplomats hostage in the embassy in Tehran. All of a sudden, Shiite Iran comes into full bloom, into full resurgence, into full renaissance. The Shiites see a new vindication in the rise of their system, and the Shiites are not just happy about having Iran; the Shiites look to the persecuted Shiites everywhere else.

Iranians have a territorial strategy called the "Shiite Crescent." The first country of the Shiite Crescent was Iran. Who created it? Jimmy Carter turned Iran into a fanatic Islamic malignant growth, which is now metastasizing and spreading its tentacles to other countries with Shiite populations.

Like Iraq. Iraq borders Iran and 60% of the population is Shiite. George W. Bush did the right thing by removing Saddam Hussein, but let's stop and pause for a moment and think like Shiite Muslims. In Iraq, 60% are Shiites. But did the Shiites ever rule Iraq? No, it was always the Sunnis. And, in fact, Saddam Hussein represented only a part of the Sunnis, the Arab Sunnis which were 20% of the population. With the U.S. promoting a representative government, the Shiites will have the ruling majority.

The Sunnis have had control for 1300 years. Now all of a sudden the hand of the Shiites is raised. This is a revolution in Islamic thinking. The Shiites have a Messianic dream of defeating the Sunnis. They feel they must overthrow the Sunni kingdom so that they will have true Orthodox Islam-the family of Mohammed should be ruling Mecca and Medina.

Yet, next month I will lay out three possible scenarios; all three of them will lead to the suppression of Shiite Islam. For more information see my newest briefing, Shiite/Sunni: The Two Houses of Islam.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sunnis and Shiites: Conflict Within Islam: - by Avi Lipkin - Koinonia House

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sunni Muslims make up 85% of the Islamic world; the Shiites, only 15%. But the 15% of Shiites are concentrated in the Persian Gulf, where the oil is. That's the key to understanding the war that is coming against Iran and the war that is going to return the fanatic Shiites to Sunni subjugation.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict/Arab-islamic-empire.php

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/02/28/geert-wilders-islam-not-religion-totalitarian-ideology/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/01/us/stephen-bannon-war-with-radical-islam.html

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict/Arab-islamic-empire.php

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict/Arab-islamic-empire.php

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/223841/islams-religious-war-everyone-daniel-greenfield

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/223841/islams-religious-war-everyone-daniel-greenfield

# data[].attributes.body
http://study.com/academy/lesson/muslim-and-hindu-conflict-in-india-and-the-partition-of-india-and-pakistan.html

# data[].attributes.body
http://blogs.prio.org/2015/04/islam-and-conflict/

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/223841/islams-religious-war-everyone-daniel-greenfield

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/16/are-muslim-countries-more-violent/