Far from being ‘the enemy within’, as seen by most UK media, Muslims who rejected the rotten two-party system in the local elections were voting patriotically and deserve praise

For many years, the mainstream media and political class have portrayed Muslims as an “enemy within” which refuses to engage with British democracy and cultivates a separatist agenda.

That line of attack has always been false, and last week was decisively proved wrong.

British Muslims made a massive intervention in the May elections. They abandoned Labour, voting instead for independent parties which support a ceasefire and have condemned Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

By doing so they sent out a message to Keir Starmer that his slavish support for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may cost his party dozens of seats in the looming general election.

‘Foments hatred’

Take for example the splash headline in the Daily Mail: “Dozens of pro-Gaza activists elected.”

In the words of Chris Doyle, the respected director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, this was “one of the worst most dangerous front pages ever on a British publication” – one that “foments hatred and risk lives”.

The Daily Mail failed to mention in its coverage that over 34,700 Palestinians have, according to Gaza’s health ministry, been slaughtered over the last seven months.

In such terrible circumstances, it’s only natural that Muslim voters should rise up against Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s cross-party coalition in support of Israel’s far-right prime minister, Netanyahu.

And, of course, it’s not just Muslims who are horrified by the line taken by our two main party leaders. So are countless other Britons, including many Jews.

Principled opposition

In this terrible moment in the history of the Middle East, there’s nothing wrong with being a “pro-Gaza activist”, to use the clumsy Daily Mail formulation.

In fact, the phrase is surely synonymous with support for human decency and principled opposition to the indiscriminate slaughter being carried out by the Israeli army.

Do not forget that Islamophobia is rife within Starmer’s Labour. Ali Milani, Labour’s candidate against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge in 2019, highlighted this inconvenient fact in a devastating interview with Middle East Eye.

The Martin Forde KC report into racism inside Labour confirmed that Labour has a serious Islamophobia problem. Though not as dreadful as Sunak’s Conservatives.

Patriotic

As I set out in a series of investigative articles for MEE, the Conservatives persistently smear and target Britain’s Muslim minority, always operating in alliance with a poisonously Islamophobic mass media.

This does raise the urgent question: how should Muslims vote at a time when the two main political parties have turned virulently against them? It would have been entirely understandable had British Muslims recoiled from a democratic system that has treated them with disdain and contempt.

They did not reject British democracy. Instead, they turned their back on a rotten two-party system that has chosen to target and despise Muslims rather than give them a voice.

To sum up, British Muslims have voted in a patriotic way. Over the last few months, most voters, though not the political and media classes, have supported an immediate ceasefire.

Most important of all, their votes have had an effect. Recently, Starmer, who for so long saw his role as Westminster point man for Netanyahu, suddenly changed his tune.

He demanded that Netanyahu should abandon plans for a Rafah offensive, and called for an immediate ceasefire.

This was new language from Starmer. It would never have happened but for last week’s Muslim vote.

Source: Middle East Eye

German authorities have sought for many years to increase the number of imams educated domestically to decrease the influence of foreign countries on its Muslim communities.

As part of the joint German-Turkish training initiative, 100 imams are to be educated in Germany annually starting next year, while the number of imams assigned from Turkey is to be gradually reduced by the same number.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called the agreement “an important milestone for the integration and participation of Muslim communities in Germany.”

“We need preachers who speak our language, know our country and stand up for our values,” Faeser said. “We want imams to get involved in the dialogue between religions and discuss questions of faith in our society.”

About 5.5 million of Germany’s 83.2 million residents are Muslim, and almost 3 million people in the country are Turkish or have Turkish roots.

For many decades, the Turkish government has exercised influence on the large immigrant community through the Muslim religious leaders it sent to work in Germany.

Relations between Germany’s majority Christian population and the Muslim minority traditionally have been complicated. Extremist attacks committed in the name of the Islamic State group resulted in raids and bans of Muslim associations deemed radical.

Racism, hatred and sometimes violence against Muslims in Germany are widespread and often part of their everyday experience, according to a recent report.

The agreement on the new imam training came together after “lengthy negotiations” with Turkey’s Diyanet, or Presidency of Religious Affairs, and the union of Turkish-Islamic cultural organizations in Germany, known by its Turkish acronym DITIB, the German Interior Ministry said.

With around 900 mosque communities, DITIB is the largest Islamic association in Germany.

The agreement with Turkey calls for DITIB to be in charge of training the 100 imams in Germany each year, but the aim is to have the men supplement their religious educations with classes at the Islamic College Germany.

The Islamic College Germany, or Islamkolleg Deutschland, is based in Osnabrueck in northern Germany. It was founded by Muslim community associations, theologians and academics in 2019 to provide practical and theological training for German-speaking religious staff and imams for local communities.

The German government also wants to promote courses for future imams that include German language teaching and religious education, as well as classes about history, political issues and German values, German news agency dpa reported.

Turkish immigrants started coming in significant numbers more than 60 years ago, when West Germany recruited “guest workers” from Turkey and elsewhere to help the country advance economically.

The mostly young men were often employed in coal mining, steel production and the auto industry. Many who initially came as temporary workers decided to stay and bring their families, giving Berlin and other cities in western and southwestern Germany large immigrant communities.

Source: The Associated Press