BOOGEYLAND RESERVATION

I have started this blogg on the Europe Day. I hope that Europe is not going to become another €mpire exploiting and discriminating “other”, “inferior”, “less developed”, ghettoized peoples and regions.

Today, the 9th of May has become a European symbol (Europe Day) which, along with the flag, the anthem, the motto and the single currency (the euro), identifies the political entity of the European Union. Europe Day is the occasion for activities and festivities that bring Europe closer to its citizens and peoples of the Union closer to one another.

On the 9th of May 1950, Robert Schuman presented his proposal on the creation of an organised Europe, indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the “Schuman declaration”, is considered to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union.

Germany, Feb 7, 2008. (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called for calm on Thursday when he visited the site of a fire in a western German city which killed nine people of Turkish origin and heightened community tension.

The cause of Sunday’s blaze in an apartment block in Ludwigshafen is not known but speculation is rife in the local Turkish community and in Turkish media that it was a racially motivated arson attack.

The fire revived memories of a firebombing by Germans in 1993 in Solingen which killed five Turks and drew international condemnation. One person in the crowd listening to Erdogan brandished a placard recalling the Solingen attack.

Turkish newspapers have reported that a family who lost members in the blaze had been threatened by neo-Nazis.

By Bernhard Winkler

Spain’s Muslims: Living on Society’s Edge

 Cordoba’s La Mezquita cathedral was actually a Muslim mosque until 1492.

 

Though Islam is woven into the fabric of the country’s history, Moroccans and other Arabs living there today are struggling to find their place in society as well as their role in the Muslim world.

A look at Ceuta, one of the two Spanish cities on the Moroccan Mediterranean coast, is revealing. Ceuta is the gateway to Europe. The border between Africa and Europe, between Islamic Morocco and Catholic Spain, is here. Half of Ceuta’s 72,000 residents are Christian, while the other half are Muslim, mainly of Moroccan origin.

The chairman of Islamic Community of Ceuta, Abselam Hamadi, says that many Muslims still feel like second-class citizens, that they don’t have the same opportunities Christians have.

“Only few Muslims get jobs in Ceuta’s state administration. The response is always the same: professional qualifications lacking. That’s not the truth, of course. But if more Muslims were accepted, there would be more Muslims than Christians in the administration one day, and that scares the Christians.”

The fact is, Ceuta’s Muslim residents have dramatically lower standards of living and levels of education than Christian residents. They mainly live in the El Principe district, a poor, entirely Muslim neighborhood right on the border to Morocco, where integration doesn’t exist. Young Muslims born in Spain to Moroccan parents live here. They don’t feel Moroccan, but they aren’t fully accepted by Spanish society either.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1433,1146159,00.html

Desecration of 148 Muslim graves in a war cemetery in northern France.

It was discovered that vandals had hung a pig’s head from one tombstone, desecrated others and wrote slogans insulting Justice Minister Rachida Dati, who was born in France to parents from Northern Africa.

The graves were in the Muslim section of Notre Dame de Lorette, among France’s largest war cemeteries, near the northern town of Arras. The dead are mostly from World War I, and the Muslim graves, representing the dead of colonial armies, are turned toward Mecca.

In April 2007, Nazi slogans and swastikas were painted on about 50 graves in the Muslim section of the same cemetery, and two men found guilty in the case were sentenced to a year in prison.

About 78,000 colonial subjects of France, many of them Muslims, died in World War I.

Roberto Calderoli, 52, a senior member of the Northern League appeared on television wearing a T-shirt printed with one of Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed. Mr Calderoli has also threatened to defile the proposed site of a mosque in Padua by walking a pig over the ground.

Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant Northern League party said Thursday, September 13, he was ready to bring his own pig to “defile” the site where the mosque is due to be built in the northern city of Bologna.

“I am making myself and my pig available for a walk at the site where they want to build the mosque.”

Calderoli also said he would eat “a nice plateful of pork chops to show my lack of sympathy for those who consider pork forbidden meat.”

Calderoli is no stranger to controversy over Islam and is often accused of making racist comments. When Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup, he said France had “sacrificed its identity by fielding niggers, Muslims and communists”.