Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

According to AJ+, the number of pupils who wear abayas in school represents less than  0.00005 percent   of all students in the country:  A threat to ‘France’s secularism’:  The latest example of how French state institutions work together to uphold institutional racism Related “ Muslim societies are assumed to have sweeping patriarchal structures, while it is claimed that Western societies are pictures of progressive modernity, says Swiss social anthropologist Annemarie Sancar. Neither of these absolute views are correct.” The West's gleeful obsession with the 'oppressed Arab woman' Liberal feminism is bankrupt Imperialist feminism and liberalism A photo from qantara.de

France has always waged war against  its  people for secular, imperialist, colonial, racist, capitalist reasons—all resolutely fascist. On lessons of street action and fire building in Paris

Also available en Français The French obsession with the veil Related The Imaginary Separatism of Salafist Women

A Council of Europe pro-headscarf-endorsed ad pulled

The rise and fall of a sex cult leader

 and the freedom of believers

 I think this is worth watching. Ethos, a Turkish TV series

 “ Neither Jean-Luc Mélenchon nor Emmanuel Macron know what  laïcité  [French state secularism] is , yet Macron wants to teach Muslims that “Islam is in crisis.” 

 “ The point I try to make in that article is that the debate on whether Jews should be accorded full political rights in 1840s Prussia presents some striking similarities with the debate on Muslims’ integration into French society today. More precisely, my point is that the French state’s demand that religious minorities (and let’s be frank, Muslims in particular) respect the principle of secularism in the public space is reminiscent of Bruno Bauer’s position on the Jewish Question. Bruno Bauer believed that the Jews deserved to be granted political rights only if they stopped being Jews and embraced Enlightenment thought. In other words, he conceived of political emancipation as a kind of award that individuals receive only if they renounce their own religious identity and embrace the identity that the secular state deems as appropriate. Likewise, the French state demands that Muslims get rid of their religious/cultural practices if they want to show willingness to integrate into...

  Dear white people of France,

A critique  At a time when a global pandemic has only exacerbated spiraling inequalities, pervasive racism, and xenophobic insurgencies on both sides of the Atlantic, Habermas suggests that humanity already possesses the resources for levelheaded debate oriented toward the common good. Yet a tension persists between Habermas’s political ideals and his historical framework. The gap is not so much one of theory and practice, which Habermas readily acknowledges. Instead, his story’s European origin collides with its universal intent. Habermas insists that postmetaphysical reason—because it refuses to take refuge in foundational certainties—provides a basis for the inter-cultural dialogue necessary to confront global crises of climate change, mass migration, and unregulated markets. But by tracing the emergence of modern rationality solely to a Western, and Christian, learning process, he elides the historical reckoning necessary for any such dialogue. The same problem faced Haber...

Fake tolerance, repression of individual freedoms in the name of a new definition of secularism What makes someone –a white person– in a country originally founded as a settler colonial state identify themselves as "Canadian" and regards a Sikh or a Muslim citizen not "Canadian" ? Canada became a sovereign state less than 100 years ago. Its name is indigenous to some of the people who had inhabited the land.

"There is no social backlash to anyone who hold Islamophobic views"

Today what is happening to Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) amounts to " a genocide ". In the 1960s a Burmese Muslim called for "secularism", the separation of religion from the state. "In Burma, it is the Muslim community that has carried the banner of secularism and opposed government attempts to specify a state religion. U Rashid, a respected member of the Burmese cabinet in the early 1960s and a leader of Muslims, opposed the prime minister's attempt to make Buddhism the state religion. He questioned whether, in view of the religious pluralism that characterized contemporary Burmese society, a state religion could serve to integrate and unite the nation:  'As a Muslim, I believe there should be no compulsion in religion. Everyone should be free to adopt and practice the religion he likes. As a Muslim, I do not and indeed cannot object to or oppose anything that Buddhists and persons professing other religions may do for their own religion. All I can a...

American culture and the liberalization of hijab (You need free registration to read the piece)

The Story Behind the Rise of Turkey's Ulema

"[I]f the condition for granting religious liberty is, in effect, conformity to secular public norms, what kind of liberty is this?" Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492-1900 A book review

By the author of Fields of Blood — Religion and the History of Violence. The myth of religious violence and An interview with Karen Armstrong

Neither Mélenchon nor Macron know what laïcité [secularism] is

" If, according to Zwemer, the truth that Islam fails to grasp is that “Jesus is lord and savior,” and that he must be chosen as such, liberalism demands that the individual, in order to be an individual, must choose liberalism; this, as Massad notes, is a weaponized “choice,” for the only choice that liberalism can accept as a choice is liberalism. The new choice, then, appears as the liberal form of damnation; Muslims who do not choose liberalism, like those who do not choose Jesus, are the new forsaken, to be converted or killed. It is this structure of liberalism, as an ideology of imperial missionary work in the name of secularism, that  Islam in Liberalism  demands that we confront." — Murad Idris