Friday in a Parisian mosque

By Emmanuel Sivan

Rue Jean Pierre Timbaud is the main thoroughfare of the Moslem quarter of Paris. Midday Friday, as is expected, is its busiest time of the entire week. That is prayer time in the mosques. The masses come from suburbs near and far to buy their ritually slaughtered Halal meat, perfumes and spices. Men buy their jalabiya robes and women their hijab veils, all with various degrees of modesty. Bookstores sell religious books and pamphlets, which include instructions for Moslem women on how to behave modestly alongside Tariq Ramadan's missives, and the books of converted former-communist Raja Jarudi filled with Holocaust denial. Along with all these are a number of works on the Jews: "Sons of monkeys and pigs," and a small treatise against the Geneva Initiative, which of course was devised under the auspices of the Vatican, "the sworn enemy of Islam since the days of the Crusades," by the arch-Zionist Yosi Beilin and the Christian-Arab collaborator Yasser Abed Rabbo.

At the end of the street stands the Mosque of Omar Ibn-Al Khattab, which seems to belong to the Moslem Brotherhood. The mosque is overflowing, and there are crowds standing outside, listening to the sermon over loudspeakers. A light rain starts falling, but no one pays any attention even after it turns into a downpour.

But this time there is a surprise. In contrast to what I heard in my previous seasonal visits, the topic of the sermon is not taken from the main subjects: the troubles of the Moslems around the world, Palestine, Iraq, Chechniya and Afghanistan; or the deleterious effects of French culture on Moslem immigrants and particularly on their children - sexual permissiveness, lack of respect for parents, etc.

The topic this time is the "Fitna," the civil war between Moslems that is destroying all that is good among the faithful.

In two other mosques in the quarter, you can hear variations on the same theme, an acquaintance told me. Is that just a coincidence?

"Woe unto us," wails the preacher in fluent Arabic, weaving in sentences in the Algerian dialect and statements in French. "The hand of the Moslem has shed the blood of his brother."

The most serious is the attacks by the Shi'ites in Iraq against the Sunnis. "And these are the same Shi'ites whose leader Ibn Al Alqami handed over the keys of Baghdad in 1258 to the Mongols." These are the same traitorous Shi'ites who today are handing over Iraq to the American army.

The leader of these traitors is Nuri Al Malaki, the prime minster of Iraq, and the Shi'ite religious leaders from the Sadar and Hakim families who are inciting Shi'ites to persecute Sunnis wherever they can find them, claiming that they were the supporters of Saddam Hussein.

"But we [the Sunnis] have also sinned," said the preacher in his tearful voice. "Woe to us," responds the congregation. "The hotheads among us, such as the martyr Abu Musab [Al Zarqawi, the Jordanian commander of the Al-Qaeda-linked Jihadist militias until his death in the summer of 2006] opened the war against all of the Shi'a," explains the preacher, "instead of putting an end to the slaughter, to bring people closer [to religion], since Islam has strong enemies on the outside, led by the U.S."

And over all these problems hovers a dark cloud, the Iranian menace controlled by a "Safawiyya regime," a blunt hint to the Safavid Dynasty that forcibly converted the previously Sunni Iran into a Shi'ite nation. This is when the preacher regains control and calls in a resolute voice: "But remember that the original guilt is that of the Shi'ites. They refused to accept the three first Caliphs, who they curse unto this day in their prayers - including even Omar Ibn al Khattab," the mosque's namesake.

In short, six years after the September 11 attacks, it is still a difficult time for the Islamist zealots in our region and in the diaspora.

Arab - Speak Arabic

Arab - Speak Arabic

By Emmanuel Sivan

Good news for devotees of the Arabic language: Don't be discouraged, you are not alone. An ally has arisen in the north: the president of Syria. In his recent inauguration speech for a second term, he portrayed the spread of foreign words as a national enemy. He outlined "instructions" designed to prevent the deterioration of the Arabic language's status in advertisements, the media and education. He also demanded assistance for Arabic, to allow it to become more advanced "so that it can be integrated with scientific and cognitive development." Syria is an orderly country. The president speaks and the prime minister acts on it. The latter ordered regional governors to conduct a system of "Arabization," which mainly consists of removing signs from businesses that bear non-Arabic names - concepts and brand names that became so popular in the 1990s as globalization penetrated Syria. The governors received orders to replace these with Arabic writing, with the non-Arabic names appearing below in tiny letters. In advertisements, pure literary Arabic must be used, without using expressions from the colloquial language, which is a "murky and inferior version." Whenever any doubt arises about a translation from a foreign language, the Academy for Arabic's directives should be followed. The Academy, of course, is in Damascus, "the beating heart of Arabism."

The regime has adopted a similar policy against high schools and private colleges that specialize in foreign languages: They have received a directive to focus on the core subjects, which are studied in Arabic. Much has changed since the 1980s, when Damascus comedians used to tell about a dialogue between two Alawi officers.

Officer A: "We won't be able to integrate into the global economy until we learn foreign languages."

Officer B: "I don't agree. Just yesterday I saw a foreign tourist ask passersby in Damascus, in five languages, how to get to the Kassioun market. No one understood him. So what good did all his knowledge of languages do him?

Today young and old flock to learn foreign languages at embassies and private institutes. Some are Alawis who work in government institutions and the army.

This affair illustrates the sense of siege the Syrian regime is experiencing. It is pitted against a Western cultural invasion. Al-ghazw al-fikri is an instructive Arab expression. It comes from the Muslim Brotherhood's vocabulary and is designed to take the wind out of the sails of this large opposition movement, which does not enjoy legal status but is being aided by the wave of religiosity sweeping the urban community. The Baath slogan "Syria as the focus of Arabism" has been painted by Assad with Muslim colors. Will this bolster his weakened legitimacy? Time will tell. Perhaps it will help to affirm a shared external enemy, in the spirit of the times and the "clash of civilizations."

But there is no guarantee, mainly because a second enemy of the regime is at the gate. As noted, the regime is based on a combination of Syrianism and Arabism. But the emphasis on the Syrian element, at a time when Syria appears isolated in the Arab arena, comes up against an alternative vision. Al-Qaida is now posing a challenge to the nation state - whether Syrian, Algerian or similar. Its slogan is wataniya = wathniya (nation state = paganism), and it expresses a vision in which the Islamic world returns to the way it was divided before the 20th century. Al-Qaida makes a point to refer to the area of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) as "al-Sham."

Some of Al-Qaida's prominent ideologues are Syrian, and they disseminate these ideas on the Internet. A possible interpretation: dismantling Syria and integrating it into "liberated enclaves" in al-Sham. Soon the Syrian volunteers will return from the jihad in Iraq, bringing ideas of this sort. In short, the isolated Assad regime, whose base of legitimacy is weakening, has reasons to be fearful. Also from within.

from
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909635.html