Europe

AP news

VATICAN CITY (AP) _ The Vatican has invited Muslims to work together to end poverty and the violence and extremism that are often its result.

The Vatican office in charge of interreligious dialogue issued a message to Muslims Friday to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

In the note, Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran said poverty has the power to humiliate people and is a source of isolation, anger and revenge. Since extremism and violence are also the result, he said it is important to tackle poverty at its root.

The Vatican has sought to mend relations with Muslims that were strained after Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 quoted a medieval text depicting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as violent. Benedict apologized and said the text didn’t reflect his views.

France Army Organizes Hajj Trips

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Received from Islamonline

CAIRO —For Mohamed-Ali Bouharb, the soul-searching journey of hajj he plans to embark on this year will be exceptional, since the Muslim soldier will be traveling all the way to the holy sites on a special trip provided by the army of the secular European country. "The army is always in advance of society," a jubilant Captain Bouharb told the Globe & Mail on Tuesday, September 15.

For this year’s hajj, Muslims in the French army who will go on the journey to Saudi Arabia will not have to travel on private commercial flights with ordinary civilians.

In a break from tradition, the Defense Ministry will provide its Muslim soldiers a plane to fly them and organize their stay.

The new hajj journey is the first to be sponsored by the army for Muslim personnel.

Longtime before, the army has sponsored annual trips for its soldiers to Catholic shrines in Lourdes with its long history of bonds with the Catholic Church.

Soldiers and officers willing to embark on the hajj journey next November would pay about 3,000, an amount less than most private travel agencies.

On the other hand, accommodation and guide will be provided by the Saudi Defense Ministry.

Muslim soldiers hailed the army’s upcoming hajj trip for providing them security.

Military personnel who travel on their own for the hajj could fall victim "to thieves or swindlers or disreputable travel agencies," Bouharb said.

"Or imagine the situation of a serviceman who goes on his own and stays in a place where there’s some incident – I don’t know what kind, but maybe a bomb or a fire."

Hajj, Makkah pilgrimage, is one of the five pillars of Islam.

Every able-bodied adult Muslim -- who can financially afford the trip -- must perform hajj once in their lifetime.

There are nearly seven million Muslims in France, making up the biggest Muslim minority in Europe.

Changing Atmosphere

While arranging a hajj trip would be unusual for any Western government, it is especially extraordinary in France, a Catholic country with a strict secular tradition.

Some like Bouharb insist that the army remains insulated from the wrangling and heated debates on secularism and thorny issues regarding he Muslim community, like the recent furor over Muslim women burqa.

"It the army is anaesthetized from all the social questions and debate outside."

Yet, experts say Islam in the French military was not on an equal footing with other faiths.

The Defence Ministry created a Muslim chaplaincy only in 2005, long after it had established Catholic, Protestant and Jewish offices.

The atmosphere, however, is changing in army with a number of new policies that better accommodated Muslim personnel, like the hajj trips.

"Soldiers I’ve interviewed say it was hard to be Muslim in the armed forces until a few years ago," said Elyamine Settoul, a doctoral student at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris who has surveyed minorities in the military.

"There were no accommodations for Ramadan," he added.

"If the meals contained pork they weren’t offered an alternative. It created tensions. But they say it’s much better now."

Other initiatives were designed to help Muslim soldiers understand the history and culture of France.

Last year, the army sent two of its Muslim chaplains to a government-sponsored class on citizenship and secular values for imams, the first of its kind. Another six will attend the course this fall.

"What I knew about secularism going in was what everybody knows," said Capt. Bouharb, 32, who was one of the first graduates.

"What I learned was its history, all the political debate at the beginning of the 20th century and its legal basis."

Bouharb also said the course left him embracing his French Muslim identity.

"Even if our parents were not born in France, it’s our country."

Muslims protest alleged defacement of Quran

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By DEREK GATOPOULOS
Associated Press Writer

ATHENS, Greece (AP) _ Authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of Muslims in central Athens as they protested a Greek policeman’s alleged defacement of a Quran owned by an Iraqi immigrant.
The clashes occurred outside Parliament as the demonstrators threw rocks and plastic bottles at police, and smashed windows of a luxury hotel in central Syntagma Square. A police helicopter hovered overhead.
Chanting ``God is great!’’ and waving leather-bound copies of Islam’s holy book, about 1,500 Muslim immigrants _ mostly young men _ had begun the demonstration with a march to Parliament to express their anger. The clashes occurred after the protest had dwindled to about 300.
``We want the officer or officers involved to be prosecuted, and the government to issue an apology,’’ protester Manala Mohammed, a Syrian national, told The Associated Press. ``We want people to show us respect.’’
Rioters overturned a car, damaged several parked vehicles and set fire to trash bins. Protest organizers, appealing for restraint, also scuffled with the rioters and tidied up the streets after the violence ended. Police reported 15 arrests.
In a less violent demonstration, police fired tear gas to dispel a few stone-throwing protesters. Police arrested an Afghan man on suspicion of trying to firebomb an Athens police station in an attack that left him severely burned.
Police released a photograph of the torn Quran and said they were investigating the circumstances of the incident, which occurred, but they gave no further details. They said the book belonged to an Iraqi immigrant.
Most native Greeks are baptized into the Christian Orthodox Church.
Waves of illegal immigration over the past few years have led to an influx of Muslims, mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan. The majority live in squalid, overcrowded apartments in poor areas.
Greece has asked for European Union assistance to deal with a spike in illegal immigration.
In 2008, Greek authorities arrested 146,337 migrants entering the country illegally, a 30 percent increase from the previous year and a 54 percent jump from 2006, according to figures from the Interior Ministry.
Greek rights activist Thanassis Kourkoulas, one of the protest organizers, said the marches were intended to show that immigrants ``have a voice.’’
``What happened is a great insult to every Muslim, every immigrant and every Greek who respects democracy,’’ he said.

Arrests over anti-Islam protests in UK

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Received by Associated Press

LONDON (AP) _ Two people will face charges after a march to support British soldiers was marred by anti-Muslim protests, police said.
Bedfordshire Police said officers made nine arrests at a rally after a South Asian man and a business owned by a South Asian family were attacked.
The largely peaceful rally in the city of Luton, just north of London, was organized to show support for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But a small number of demonstrators chanted anti-Islamic slogans and carried banners which read ``No Sharia Law in the U.K.’’
Police said a man will appear at Luton Magistrates’ Court charged with possessing an offensive weapon. A woman will appear before the same court charged with an anti-social behavior offense.
A third man was fined for a public order offense, and six other people have been released by police pending further investigations.
The demonstration followed clashes in March, when Muslim anti-war demonstrators disrupted a parade for soldiers returning home from Iraq.

Bosnian Serb leader says Bosnia under occupation

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Associated Press, BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) _ The Bosnian Serb leader said Thursday that international administrators in Bosnia have overstepped their mandate for a decade and run the country like an occupying power.Milorad Dodik said the 1995 peace agreement had not foreseen that foreigners would change the constitution, fire local officials or impose laws. Yet, he said, in the past 10 years they have imposed over 300 laws and replaced some 500 local officials.The result has been that the country was destabilized and peace jeopardized, Dodik told the Bosnia Serb parliament.``Bosnia-Herzegovina has been for years a prisoner of the Office of the High Representative,’’ he said, adding that the situation can be described as an ``occupation.’’Dodik has been calling for some time for the closure of the office of Bosnia’s international administrator _ a post designed to ensure the proper implementation of the peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war here. The position of administrator is currently held by Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko.Foreign administrators are representatives of the Peace Implementation Council, a grouping of countries that signed the peace agreement as guarantors. Immediately after the war, that council concluded that its representatives had too little authority to do their job and extended their mandate so they can remove obstructive local officials and impose laws.There was no immediate reaction from Inzko’s office. A previous administrator, Miroslav Lajcak, responded to similar criticisms in the past by saying that only the Peace Implementation Council can make decisions concerning the authority of the international representative.