Daily Archives: July 26, 2017

Seyran Ate: Im not alone with this idea. It is a movement, its a revolution. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

A Muslim feminist who founded a liberal mosque in Berlin, triggering death threats and fatwas, is planning to open an inclusive place of worship in the UK, saying a revolution in Islam is under way.

Seyran Ate, a Turkish-born lawyer and human rights campaigner, visited London this week to investigate potential sites for a liberal mosque open to men, women and LGBT Muslims on an equal basis, and people from all strands of Islam.

She hopes to establish such a mosque within a year, and says her aim is to create similar places of worship in every European capital.

Im not alone with this idea. It is a movement, its a revolution, she told the Guardian. I may be the face of the liberal mosque, but I alone am not the mosque. We have millions of supporters all over the world.

However, the opening of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque, in a space rented from a Lutheran church in Berlin last month prompted a hostile reaction from conservative Muslims in Europe, Egypt and Turkey.

Ate received death threats via social media and was told you will die during a street confrontation. Egypts Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah, a state-run Islamic body, declared the mosques principles incompatible with Islam. The legal department of Cairos al-Azhar University issued a fatwa against liberal mosques.

Turkeys main Muslim authority, Diyanet, said the mosque was an experiment aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion.

Ate, 54, who has had police protection since 2006, was forced to step up her personal security. The itinerary of her two-day trip to London was unpublicised, and she was accompanied by close-protection officers. Asked if she feared for her life, she said: Yes, a little bit. I could be in danger. People recognise me.

Although the Berlin mosque was crowded on its opening day, numbers dwindled following the death threats. It made people afraid to come, said Ate. But, she added, 95% of emails she had received since the opening of the Berlin mosque were supportive.

There are more and more people wanting to break the chains. In many countries you can find people who are practising what were doing, but they are doing it under cover, privately, she said.

Liberal and secular Muslims are squeezed out by radical Islam, so they decide to be silent. Its not so easy for liberal Muslims to be out. Its like being homosexual. They are tarnished as the enemy of Islam.

The Berlin mosque took eight years to establish, but I think now things will go faster, said Ate. She is planning to open a second liberal mosque in Freiburg by the end of the year, and is working closely with other progressive Muslims, including Ani Zonneveld, a female imam based in Los Angeles, Shirin Khankan, a Danish woman and imam who opened a female-led mosque in Copenhagen last year, Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, an Algerian-born gay imam based in Marseille, and Elham Manea, an expert in sharia law based in Zurich.

Ate said in the UK there was a particular need for liberal Islam because sharia courts were permitted to operate. Sharia is a war against womens rights, nothing else, she said. The UK has helped Islamists to bring women under Islamic sharia law and its patriarchal structures.

Ate also takes a tough line on headscarves. When she opened the Berlin mosque, she said women wearing burqas or niqabs would not be admitted. She has since compromised: women must show their faces to her or other female leaders at the mosque but then will be given the option of replacing their head coverings. However, no woman wearing a niqab or burqa has as yet come to the mosque.

There is no Islamic requirement [to cover ones head]. There is no theological argument even in the most conservative interpretation of the Quran, she said.

The hijab, niqab and burqa represented the sexualisation and subjugation of women, she added. Its men saying, I cover her because she is my property.

In Germany more and more women are veiled. You see children of four or five wearing headscarves. Women in north Africa are fighting not to wear the hijab while western women are fighting to wear it. Im on the side of women worldwide who dont want to be veiled.

The Berlin, Freiburg, London and other liberal mosques will be open to Muslims from all sections of Islam, such as Sunni, Shia, Alawi and Sufi.

Ate is also gathering support for a European citizens initiative on extremism, including Islamophobia and antisemitism. She needs a million signatures from at least seven EU member states to oblige the European commission to consider a request for legislation to prevent the adverse consequences of extremism.

Were confident of getting the signatures; its a snowball, she said. The proposal was liberal, aimed at protecting all religions, and was pro-womens rights, she added.

She is hoping to gather 100,000 signatures from the UK. You are still part of Europe, you still have responsibility. Even when you have your Brexit, you will still be part of Europe.

Ate is supported in her efforts to found an inclusive mosque in the UK by several members of the House of Lords. David Pannick, a human rights lawyer and crossbench peer, said: Seyran Ate should have the support of all who believe in freedom of religion. It is sad that those who take advantage of freedom of religion for themselves are so reluctant to grant it to others.

The Labour peer Kamlesh Patel said he also supported Ates push for inclusivity and the freedom of choice in worship.

See the article here:

Muslim feminist plans to open liberal mosque in Britain | World news ... - The Guardian

OTTAWA National Defence has been struggling to make good on one of the Trudeau government's recent promises: giving tax breaks to military personnel and police officers deployed on certain overseas operations.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced the measure during a major speech at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., in May as part of the Liberals' new defence policy.

While Sajjan billed the move as an attempt to recognize the sacrifices that are often made by military personnel and their families, it also addressed what had been a prickly issue for the minister.

Some service members based in Kuwait had become increasingly vocal in the weeks leading up the announcement about a policy change that threatened to strip their tax-exempt status.

Yet the devil has proven to be in the details, with officials now scratching their heads over what types of operations and deployments should and should not be eligible for tax relief.

The debate is particularly relevant for the navy's sailors, many of whom on close reading of the defence policy would not be eligible for tax relief despite spending up to six months at sea at any given time.

Sources tell The Canadian Press that the military's senior leadership is now seized with the issue, and that defence chief Gen. Jonathan Vance has told officials he wants the issue resolved by mid-August.

Alan Okros, an expert on the management of military personnel at the Canadian Forces College, said officials are now caught trying to make good on the Liberals' promise without making matters worse.

"They're trying to find a solution here that will achieve what the government intended," Okros said.

"But they don't want to start creating precedents that would generate lawsuits or people making claims of 'Well, if that applied there, it applies here.'"

The tax measure would see the salaries of military personnel and police officers sent on certain operations exempted from federal income tax for the duration of their deployments.

The move, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2017, exempts eligible salaries up to the pay level of lieutenant-colonel and is expected to cost the federal treasury about $85-million over the next five years.

Personnel would still be eligible for extra hardship and risk pay if deployed into dangerous environments.

Both Sajjan and the Liberals' defence policy, which was released a few weeks after the minister's speech at RMC, said the exemption would be given to members deployed on what are called "named operations."

Named operations are usually the largest and most complex, such as Operation Impact, which is Canada's mission against the Islamic State group, and Operation Unifier, the military's training mission in Ukraine.

The service members complaining in Kuwait were attached to Operation Impact, and thus would be eligible for the tax benefit.

But many military personnel deployed overseas for extended periods are never attached to a named operation, or may only spend a portion of their time in such a situation.

That is particularly true of the navy, which has had two frigates sailing around the Asia-Pacific region since March, but whose sailors are not technically on a named operation.

Officials are now backing off the explicit reference to named operations, though no decision has been made on what criteria will trigger tax relief for deployed personnel.

"The Canadian Armed Forces is currently working on a framework aimed at implementing the proposed amendment to the Income Tax Act," said National Defence spokeswoman Kim Lemaire.

"It doesn't say specifically 'named operations' because there may be others that, as determined by the chief of defence staff, this tax relief will be applied to. That's still in the works right now."

Okros said the Liberals have been trying to contrast their treatment of Canada's military personnel with that of the Harper government, which was seen as being "stingy" with benefits for service members.

"Under Trudeau, they are trying to send a different message of 'We actually do support the troops,'" Okros said.

"So I think there's a bit of that in terms of a political agenda. But then how do you do this in the right way so that it doesn't create more problems than it solves?"

Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press

Read more:

Defence officials struggling with details of Liberal tax-break promise - rdnewsnow.com

Tony Abbott acknowledged he said the last parliament was the final time MPs would be bound on same-sex marriage. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP

Tony Abbott has backtracked on a previous statement that Liberal MPs would not be bound on same-sex marriage beyond the last parliament, and he says the government must stick with the plebiscite policy until the next election.

Abbott used a radio interview on Wednesday to insist the Liberal party was honour bound, by pledge of the Australian people, not to try and change this matter in the parliament.

He said the government had made an election commitment. If there is to be any change in this term of parliament its got to be by plebiscite.

The Liberal party will be forced into an internal debate about its stance on marriage equality once parliament resumes after the winter break because the Western Australian senator Dean Smith is bringing forward a private members bill for consideration.

With that development in mind, conservatives have been rallying around the plebiscite ahead of an internal party debate in August.

Liberal supporters of marriage equality expected that conservatives would resuscitate the plebiscite as part of the renewed internal debate, either by insisting that the rejected proposal be brought back into the parliament or pursuing a voluntary postal plebiscite favoured by Peter Dutton.

Abbott joined the fray on Wednesday, saying the party had made a promise at the last election. We said there would be no change to the Marriage Act in this term of parliament without a plebiscite, that this matter would be determined by the whole people.

Pressed on his comments made at the end of the marathon internal Liberal party debate in 2015, where the Coalition adopted the plebiscite policy, Abbott acknowledged that he had said the last parliament was the final time MPs would be bound.

But he said the government had gone into a subsequent election promising the issue would be resolved by a plebiscite. Yes I said in the last term of parliament that that would be the final term of parliament where Liberals MPs are bound on the issue, but we did go into that election promising a process.

Its not fair enough to abandon the process.

Abbott said any other interpretation of his position in 2015 currently doing the rounds was people inside the government meaning supporters of marriage equality being a little bit tricky.

In 2015 Abbott said the following: Ive come to the view I believe this is the party room view that this is the last term in which the Coalition party room can be bound, although we will definitely maintain the current position for the life of this term.

Going into the next election, we will finalise another position.

While conservatives will want the plebiscite to play a central role in resolving the renewed debate triggered by the Smith bill, bringing back the plebiscite could prove a risky proposition on certain scenarios.

Last time the parliament considered the issue, Smith was the only Liberal MP who broke ranks and voted against the plebiscite proposal.

It is unclear whether Smith would be the only break away vote in the event the plebiscite returned for fresh parliamentary consideration. It is possible that some other Liberal supporters of marriage equality could join the public opposition to the proposal.

Smith, and the longtime marriage equality campaigner Warren Entsch, have both publicly argued this week against the Dutton proposal a postal plebiscite.

Entsch said at the start of the week: The fact that a plebiscite of any form, whether it be postal or otherwise, is not binding I think really puts the final nail in the coffin in relation to any concept of a plebiscite and thats not going to change with a ... postal plebiscite.

Smith said plebiscites were the radical way of resolving policy issues in the Australian democratic practice.

He said he opposed them as a traditional conservative.

More than that, postal plebiscites, national plebiscites are corrosive, corrosive to our parliamentary democracy.

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Tony Abbott: Liberals 'honour bound' to stick with gay marriage plebiscite - The Guardian

The voters elected a businessman, a millionaire one. President Donald J. Trump does not need the job. He loves America.

Several people prophesied of his presidency. Look up "Hermit of Loreto" or "I Never Believed Trump Was Chosen By God" online. Obamacare exchanges are almost all broke. It cost $1.24 billion of federal start-up dollars. Our money, gone forever. It didn't cost Barack Obama a dime.

Trump is a capitalist who takes risks, pays taxes and creates jobs.

All of themTrump, Obama, Hillaryhave failed. The difference is Obama and Hillary lost trillions of our money, never their own! Name one investment of Obama's or Hillary's that worked. Check further, "Let's Compare Trump's Record vs. Clinton's & Obama's" by Wayne Ellyn Root. No president has ever received such uncalled for vilification.

Do you people want America destroyed? How can you not see the evil of Obama and Hillary? Are you for turning America into a Bernie-Socialist-Communist country? I say, "God Bless & Protect President Trump and America!" Trump is God's man for these times!!

And you better print a conservative viewpoint as your paper is full of liberalism! Let the people decide, not you and your liberal cronies!

Turner lives in Fargo.

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Letter: Take off your liberal sunglasses - INFORUM

I OWE my undying gratitude to Clif Moreton (Bring Back Sanity, Letters, July 12) for his erudite description of my liberal thinking. I should be more like him.

If I had realised much sooner in life that people like me are at the heart of many of the countrys problems I would have lived in a cave.

His sweeping statements about others points of view are precisely what he accuses Barry Tempest of. He generalises that liberal-minded people are incapable of putting their own country and its people first. The alarming thing about him in particular and Brexit in general, is that its foot soldiers are fuelled by an incomprehensible, emotive and irrational driving force. There is no substance to Brexit claims, just suppositions and rhetoric.

We have Theresa May, who hypocritically preaches about benefitting the many not the few, herself knowing that she Maydo do this and Maydo that. Shes in charge of Brexit aided by a bunch of spoiled rich boys with no real experience of life outside networking inside the Westminster bubble.

They have already reaped havoc on the impoverished in wealth, mind and body. Its like giving Jack the Ripper the keys to an infirmary.

Surveys show that in retrospect, successful companies decisions only turn out to be about 50% beneficial. Failed companies differed (note past participle) in that they were afraid to change their minds. Not much chance for us then with them firmly keeping our heads in the gas oven?

Turning to Clifs next door neighbour Jon Coombes (Critical lens on EU, Letters, July 13), we are already battling against our own home-grown forces of neoliberalism.

He clearly needs to visit Specsavers. Its either his myopia or choice of the Daily Mail for news that is preventing him from seeing what is going on in his own backyard. There is already a sea of discontent and action against austerity and neoliberalism.

Wikipedia says Neoliberalism.includes economic liberalisation policies such as privatisation, fiscal austerity, deregulation, unrestricted free trade. Has Jon forgotten how our and USAs banks and their deregulated capitalism caused a catastrophe in 2008?

Incidentally, it wasnt the EU that caused Italys problems; it was the Mafia and being stuck to the Euro rate of exchange. Actually, far from being the fount of neoliberalism, the EU has a much more effective way of preventing its extremes than the UKs First Past The Post electoral system. Its called Proportional Representation.

Liberalism balances economies between both state and private interests; a 50/50 division of a countrys GDP is common in the EU. Here, we reward excesses of wealth with tax relief. During the last seven years we have reduced the state share of our GDP to significantly less than 50%.

MIKE JOSLIN Dorchester

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Liberal viewpoint - Dorset Echo

Id like to teach them the way to hell, so they can steer clear of it.

The infamous Italian philosopher Niccol Machiavelli wrote those words in 1526, near the end of his life. He was warning citizens of the 16th-century Republic of Florence not to be duped by cunning leaders.

Machiavellis most famous book, The Prince, is widely viewed as an instruction manual for tyrants, and it kind of is. But theres more to Machiavelli than that. He taught rulers how to govern more ruthlessly, yes but at the same time, he also showed the ruled how they were being led.

He was, in other words, giving both sides the handbook.

Machiavelli also had plenty to say about things that matter today. He wrote about why democracies get sick and die, about the dangers of inequality and partisanship, and even about why appearance and perception matter far more than truth and facts.

Erica Benner, a professor of political philosophy at Yale, writes about all of this in her new book Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World. I spoke to her recently about Machiavellis legacy and what he might teach us about Trump and the decline of liberal democracies around the world.

When you look at societies like America and Britain and various other liberal democracies, she told me, you see the kinds of cracks that Machiavelli warned about and it ought to trouble us.

You can read our full conversation below.

Even by people whove never read him, Machiavellis known as the great teacher of amorality. Is that reputation earned?

Its deserved in the sense that when you read him quickly, especially in translation, it looks like hes teaching you to be evil, to do whatever it takes to get and keep power, even if that means doing what people think is wrong. But theres a lot more to him than that. To see it, though, you have to read between the lines and notice all the twists and turns and nuances.

His most famous book is The Prince. Whats it about and why should people read it today?

Its about how ambitious individuals who want to get and hold on to political power can do that. It appears to be an advice book that goes against all the usual advice books for leaders, which tells them to be just and honorable. Machiavelli turns all that upside down and says, Youve got to be willing to be ferocious and cold and underhanded if you want to get ahead in a world like ours.

But theres a downside to that kind of ruthlessness, no?

Absolutely. Hes actually showing how these tactics will get you into trouble if you read this book naively and take it at face value. For the more perceptive, its clear that hes dropping all kinds of hints about why this wont work in the long run, though it will certainly work in the short term.

But at the end of the day, its up to us, its up to citizens, to see through these manipulations.

The Prince is also a warning of sorts to citizens. Whats the message?

Hes trying to show ordinary citizens the ways that ambitious people get to power, and how those people may appear to be solutions to problems but in the end only make things worse. He tells the people, if you indulge a politician who promises to fix everything if only you give up a little more power, you will suffer far more down the line.

Machiavelli was among the first to popularize this notion that perceptions matter more than reality, that a cunning leader should bend the truth to his or her will. I wonder what he would think of phrases like post-truth and alternative facts.

I think he would say, Nothing new. This has been going on since humans started doing politics. But he thinks that citizens are responsible more than politicians. Yeah, you can sit there and say, Look at Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, or whoever it might be, and point out how they lie here and there and how that gives them an advantage or allows them to exploit fears. But at the end of the day, its up to us, its up to citizens, to see through these manipulations.

One thing Machiavelli tries to do is to get citizens to see through the tricks that politicians use to get one over on them and to manipulate them into submission and a more uncritical stance. If he were alive today, I suppose hed repeat all of these warnings and probably say, I told you so.

But Machiavelli had little faith in the average persons capacity to notice that they were being duped. He knew that the pusher of alternative facts would find an audience among those who wanted what he said to be true, even if it obviously wasnt.

If somebody wants to set themselves up as a savior in troubled times, he will always find people to support him, and hell find it easier to acquire that support if he plays the sorts of games Machiavelli describes in The Prince namely, using deception in order to exploit people for political gain. But yes, he had no illusions about the credulity of the average citizen.

Still, he insists that only the people can defend themselves against this kind of manipulation. He simply warned them that if they failed to do so, if they unwittingly gave themselves over to a lying prince, theyd eventually find themselves under the yoke of an absolute leader. And once that happens, its too late freedom has already been forfeited.

When you look at societies like America and Britain and various other liberal democracies, you see the kinds of cracks that Machiavelli warned about and it ought to trouble us.

All of this ties into Machiavellis ideas about why democracies get sick and decline, which are maybe his most important ideas and surely the most relevant today.

Yeah, I think youre right. The key question for Machiavelli, apart from all the philosophical questions about human nature, is how to defend democracy or a republic. He thinks democracy is the best form of government, and hes always asking why some last longer than others.

He sees two big problems at the root of democracies. One is partisanship, and by that he doesnt necessarily mean organized political parties but rather a society that ends up divided into parts or teams or camps. When people start to see themselves as rivals to the death, as groups with divergent interests and visions of society with no compatibility, you cant sustain a democracy. Civil conflict was a central concern of his for that reason.

When you look at societies like America and Britain and various other liberal democracies, you see the kinds of cracks that Machiavelli warned about and it ought to trouble us.

His concerns about partisanship were tied to another contemporary issue: inequality. How were these linked and what were his warnings about inequalities in a democracy?

You know your Machiavelli! He wasnt a strict egalitarian. He doesnt think the best societies are communist, where all property is held in common, but he did think that an excess of inequality would destroy a democracy because it would destroy any sense of a shared project or a shared commitment to common values and institutions.

When you get grotesque inequalities of the sort we see today in the US, democracy gets sick. People stop talking to each other, stop caring about the others concerns; divisions deepen as access to resources becomes more and more unequal. He wrote constantly that you have to maintain a reasonable balance of social opportunities and welfare or democratic institutions will collapse.

Dont take your institutions for granted. Dont take your laws for granted. Dont take order for granted. If you do, youll lose your democracy.

He was a historian, so what nations or principalities or republics did he point to as examples of these lessons? And do you see a lot of parallels today?

Well, Rome was the main one. He paid close attention to the fall of the Roman Republic, and he thought the decline of Rome was propelled by partisanship and inequalities. The parties in Rome that ended up going into civil war correlated roughly with the rich and the poor; it was class warfare.

He faced exactly these problems in his own home city, which had a very long, proud tradition of trying to be a fairly egalitarian republic, but over time was drawn into conflict by these sorts of internal divisions. As the rich get richer, they try to gain more power, and the more political power they gain, the richer they become. At the same time, the poor get poorer. What you get, ultimately, is civil conflict.

He saw this happening in Florence, wrote about how it happened in Rome, and thought future democracies would die if they failed to learn these lessons.

In what ways are the people responsible for keeping their democracies in good health?

Lots of ways. The citizenry in Machiavellis time didnt involve as many individuals as it does today, but his lessons are no less relevant. He thought the first responsibility was to sharpen your senses and notice the ways in which power is abused and the ways in which leaders overstep and stealthily strip away freedoms and standards.

You have to pay attention when leaders start making arguments designed to pit one group of citizens against another, when they claim they need more power and have to limit the courts, when they start undermining the rule of law for the sake of expediency.

The key thing for Machiavelli was always to value the rule of law thats the key thing for citizens to do. Which is why they have to be careful about who they put into power. Democracies are never entirely stable, and once the rule of law is subverted, its very difficult to get it back. All it takes is one authoritarian or one dictatorial party to undermine every norm that sustains democratic life.

A lot of people see Donald Trumps indifference to the rule of law as precisely this sort of threat.

For good reason. Trumps attempts to weaken the rule of law early in his presidency are pretty brazen. So far, the law and the institutions that prop it up have looked robust. But Machiavelli would say this is not something that you can count on.

Great institutions dont protect themselves. In the case of the US and Trumps early assaults on the rule of law, it wasnt the laws that protected themselves. It was individuals and people who put their foot down and said, No, this thing youre trying to do, we will not authorize it.

So what would Machiavellis advice to democratic citizens be today?

Dont take your institutions for granted. Dont take your laws for granted. Dont take order for granted. If you do, youll lose your democracy.

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What Machiavelli can teach us about Trump and the decline of liberal democracy - Vox