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How Quiet Islamization Threatens Secular States – Part 2

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(Continued from last week)

A tourist staying at one of the Maldives’ luxurious island resorts would never notice most of this, because most locals live on other islands. There, reports Borri, women are completely covered. Former Buddhist temples have been transformed into mosques. While a supreme court justice was caught with prostitutes, women suspected of adultery receive public lashings. And only Muslims can be citizens.

Compounding the problem is that poverty in the Maldives is extreme – a situation that adds to the allure of joining foreign terror groups, where salaries are high and benefits frequently extended to families at home. Now, some are returning from the failed caliphate and other battlefields, yet “are living freely” on the islands, recruiting and plotting new attacks.

In Belgium, despite a spate of terrorist attacks, Politico warned in early 2017 that «an increasing number of mosques in Belgium teach a radical form of Islam,» while moderate preachers feel «’powerless’ against the spread of the more extreme ideology.»

But Islamism does not always translate into violent terrorism. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s successful re-Islamizing of Ataturk’s secular republic involves the molding of minds away from Western values to create a “new, religious generation.” More and more public schools have become more like religious madrassas, where girls are taught to “obey” men, lessons on evolution have been removed from schoolbooks, and boys and girls are often segregated in classrooms. In Istanbul, reports the Washington Post, “a local education official…demanded that teachers bring pupils to attend morning prayers at local mosques.”

“Basically, President Erdogan is destroying Turkey’s secular education system,” Soner Cagaptay, Turkey program director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Voice of America. “That is the key reason why Turkey worked as a democratic society, which did not produce violent jihadist radicalization.”

It’s not just the schools. After the failed coup in 2016, Erdogan commanded the country’s mosques to raise the volume on calls to prayer. Once a gently melodic intonation, the sound now blares over the cities, making normal conversation nearly impossible until it ends. Most notably, many critics of Islam have been arrested, and on Turkish state TV, renowned theologian Mustafa Askar stated in 2016 that “those who do not pray in the Islamic fashion are animals.”

Such incidents attest to Sulehria’s claim that Islamization in countries of origin are shaping immigrant communities in the West. In Holland, for instance, 20 Islamic boarding schools were legalized in 2016, according to Elise Steilberg, who maintains a blog focusing on Turkish and Islamic involvement in education in The Netherlands. Almost all, she says, are run by a Turkish religious organization. Many also maintain strict Islamic dress codes “that make covering the hair obligatory for girls from the age of 4 on.” Girls are also required to wear long skirts or pants, and boys an Islamic headdress, or “topi.” And all students memorize Quranic surahs in both Arabic and Dutch.

Indeed, Steilberg says, there is an encroaching sense that Muslims are becoming more fundamentalist in the Netherlands, despite efforts at integration. “According to a recent survey,” she notes, “the number of people in the Netherlands that call themselves pious Muslims is decreasing. But those who are religious are steadily becoming more conservative in their beliefs. It is no longer even a surprise to see an 11-year-old fully covered in a chador in downtown Amsterdam.”

Such sightings, to be fair, are by no means common; but the very presence of fully-covered girls in a city known for its freedoms, including legalized marijuana and prostitution, demonstrates the dramatic cultural changes fundamentalist Islam is imposing on the secular West.

Yet Western governments seem to do little about it. In the UK, observes Deutsche Welle, rights organizations “have repeatedly pointed to a growing radicalization, yet it appears that authorities have not taken strong measures against it.” In Holland, “There is a lot of discussion about potentially violent radicalization, but the principle of freedom of religion makes the discussion of the growth of Islamic orthodoxy a no-go area,” says Steilberg. And in Belgium, despite a spate of terrorist attacks, Politico warned in early 2017 that “an increasing number of mosques in Belgium teach a radical form of Islam,” while moderate preachers feel “‘powerless’ against the spread of the more extreme ideology.”

For many, the concern also goes beyond national security and cultural change. Human rights issues are also frequently involved, particularly when it comes to girls and women. Of the young girls in chador in downtown Amsterdam, for instance, Steilberg says, “if she goes to an Islamic school, one wonders if she will ever be fully aware of the rights and liberties our country has to offer her. I think those rights and liberties are something we should be proud of. They are not relative, but a basic ingredient of what the Netherlands are and stand for today, and should be a part of every citizen’s future.”

Even more, they are rights and liberties that should belong to everyone, wherever they may live.

By: Abigail R. Esman
(Investigative Project on Terrorism)

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.

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