Author: M Barbu

Very few books have tackled the exploitation of Islam by political organizations to achieve wealth and power. As a result, those who ascribe to these ideologies and ways of life are rarely held accountable. However, Mohamed Said Al-Ashmawi’s book Political Islam scrutinizes the phenomenon of Political Islam and exposes the true motives of such organizations. It distinguishes between these groups and the true essence of Islam based on tawhid and its central value of mercy.

The concept of “no-go-zones” has been a hot topic in media discourse in recent years. Sensational claims have been made about the existence of exclusively Muslim neighborhoods where non-Muslims are not allowed to enter. For instance, in 2015, to emphasize the gravity of the situation, Fox News guest and “terrorism expert” Steve Emerson stated that the city of Birmingham in the UK is totally Muslim. The city is in fact only 22% Muslim. The statement led David Cameron to brand Emerson a complete idiot.

The residual threat posed by the banned terrorist group al-Muhajiroun (ALM) group is matched by the enduring public curiosity that it provokes. The symbiotic relationship between the threatening rhetoric that the group employs and the resulting fascination with its activities has played to the group’s strategy of courting attention and transmitting their ideology to a larger audience. For many years the media fed this preoccupation by promoting the provocative exploits of ALM and publishing interviews with its most prominent spokesman, the deceptively outlandish Anjem Choudary.

A rift between the Muslim world and France is widening, as leaders and the public in Muslim countries respond to the October 2 speech of President Emmanuel Macron saying Islam was “in crisis” globally. The fallout deepened with renewed Macron support to show caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and anti-France demonstrations on Friday in several Muslim countries.

The murder of French school teacher Samuel Paty by an 18 year old Muslim boy of Russian origin has opened the Pandora’s Box all over. Few days’ later three people were killed in Nice, in France again. There were protests against France in few Muslim majority countries like Bangladesh and there was boycott of French goods in many of them.

There have been some horrendous, despicable killings by Muslim extremists in France. Such killings must be condemned.

French president Emmanuel Macron played the victim card, saying that France “will not give into terrorism.” Yet when 21st century France engages in overseas militarism, otherwise known as state terrorism, in places with large Muslim populations – places that never attacked France — such as Afghanistan, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Chad, Somalia, Libya, North Mali, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen then what is to be expected? Is it okay for France to engage in militarism abroad and expect no blowback on French soil? Must not the French terrorism be condemned?