The Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk and the Minister of Innovation, Science and the Digital Economy, Leeanne Enoch, played hosts at the 2016 Small Business Leaders' Reception at Parliament House this week.

The Sun 

6 Things Wrong With Trevor Phillips Latest Crusade  (Continued from last week's CCN)
By Abdul-Azim Ahmed (A graduate of Religion and Theology BA and a Masters in Islam in Contemporary Britain. Abdul-Azim is currently completing a PhD on Islam in Wales.)
 

UK: I genuinely can’t remember the last time there was a single week without a headline story about Muslims. Sometimes, its unavoidable. With global crises like Syria, the post-war mess in Iraq, and acts of terrorism – headline news is expected. But other times, it’s engineered. Like the non-story of Ramadan exam timetables, or the non-story of halal hysteria, or the Sun’s misleading ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy with jihadis’ frontpage (which they had to offer an apology for).

This week, it’s Trevor Phillips. He’s come to tell us ‘What British Muslims Really Think’. Thanks Trev, but no thanks. I, and other British Muslims, can quite confidently and competently express ourselves. Note the word really too, which gives off the air of Muslims hiding their true intentions and nature, almost like a subversive fifth column. Trevor Philips latest Channel 4 documentary reeks of a particular kind of condescending and dog-whistle sensationalism, and as many others have pointed out over the past day alone, it’s full of problems. Rather than re-invent the wheel, here is a recap of what Trevor gets wrong.

(Continued from last week's CCN)

5) Trevor Isn’t An Anti-Racism Stalwart

Much of the credence given to Trevor Phillips comes from his work at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. But this shouldn’t give him a free-pass at making generalisations and divisive comments. He once claims Muslims are “not like us” (presumably, Muslims aren’t included in the ‘us’ he uses, which itself is revealing of Trevor’s views). More recently, he writes “Muslims basically do not want to participate in the way that other people do”. These conclusions are neither borne out of his survey findings, and they write off the successful examples of British Muslim engagement. As Miqdaad Versi writes in the Guardian: -

“But when there are 13 Muslim MPs, a British Muslim candidate for mayor of London, a Muslim dragon in the Dragons’ Den, and a Muslim winner of the Great British Bake Off, it seems that in reality, Muslims are very much part of British society.

Trevor uses the language of division and race-baiting. If it came from a member of Ukip, it would rightly be challenged. It coming from a self-described anti-racism campaigner doesn’t mean it should be left unchallenged.

He even went as far as to claim he “played a principal role in the creation of UK laws against religious discrimination — and it was a report that I commissioned exactly 20 years ago that first introduced the term Islamophobia to Britain.” This is outright denied by those involved, such as Khalida Khan who argues emphatically that “Robin Richardson and Kaushika Amin were behind the Report not Trevor Phillips”, which was a consequence of Khalida and her colleagues’ work in the an-Nisa Society.

Much of the weight of the Trevor Phillip’s sensationalism comes from his former position at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a title he has essentially used to push his own agenda against multiculturalism, which leads us on to the next point.
 

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK IN CCN: 6)  Integration Is A Two Way Street

Source: On Religion

Charles Auguste Steuben's painting of the Battle of the Poitiers in 732. The Frankish leader Charles Martel's victory over Muslim invaders is seen as a decisive moment in European history.

How Islam Created Europe
 

In late antiquity, the religion split the Mediterranean world in two. Now it is remaking the Continent.

Europe was essentially defined by Islam. And Islam is redefining it now.

For centuries in early and middle antiquity, Europe meant the world surrounding the Mediterranean, or Mare Nostrum (“Our Sea”), as the Romans famously called it. It included North Africa. Indeed, early in the fifth century A.D., when Saint Augustine lived in what is today Algeria, North Africa was as much a center of Christianity as Italy or Greece. But the swift advance of Islam across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries virtually extinguished Christianity there, thus severing the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves, with the “Middle Sea” a hard border between them rather than a unifying force. Since then, as the Spanish philosopher Josι Ortega y Gasset observed, “all European history has been a great emigration toward the North.”

After the breakup of the Roman empire, that northward migration saw the Germanic peoples (the Goths, Vandals, Franks, and Lombards) forge the rudiments of Western civilization, with the classical legacy of Greece and Rome to be rediscovered only much later. It would take many more centuries for the modern European state system to develop. Slowly, though, feudalism, whose consensual give-and-take worked in the direction of individualism and away from absolutism, gave way to early modern empires and, over time, to nationalism and democracy. Along the way, new freedoms allowed the Enlightenment to take hold. In sum, “the West” emerged in northern Europe (albeit in a very slow and tortuous manner) mainly after Islam had divided the Mediterranean world.

Islam did much more than geographically define Europe, however. Denys Hay, a British historian, explained in a brilliant though obscure book published in 1957, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea, that European unity began with the concept (exemplified by the Song of Roland) of a Christendom in “inevitable opposition” to Islam—a concept that culminated in the Crusades. The scholar Edward Said took this point further, writing in his book Orientalism in 1978 that Islam had defined Europe culturally, by showing Europe what it was against. Europe’s very identity, in other words, was built in significant measure on a sense of superiority to the Muslim Arab world on its periphery. Imperialism proved the ultimate expression of this evolution: Early modern Europe, starting with Napoleon, conquered the Middle East, then dispatched scholars and diplomats to study Islamic civilization, classifying it as something beautiful, fascinating, and—most crucial—inferior. 
 

The Atlantic

Rayani Airlines was banking on its Shariah compliant positioning to make it a success... but it looks like that was not enough.

Islam as a commodity

Religion is not dead. It is just slowly melding with capitalism.

MALAYSIA: Last week, Malay daily Harian Metro ran a feature on “Quran therapy” chicken, where Quranic verses were recited over chickens in cold storage, right after they have gone through halal slaughter.

The unnamed supplier claimed that the verses endow the chicken meat with the capabilities of repelling not only diseases, but also disasters.

For this added “therapy”, the chicken is sold at double the price of your run-of-the-mill chicken that merely listened to the hum of freezers.

This week, another Malay daily Sinar Harian ran a story on homemade ice cream brand and franchise Aiskrim Kifayah, publicising ingredients that are sunnah, or allegedly part of Prophet Muhammad’s diet: dates, figs, raisins, and even water from the Zamzam Well in Mecca.

Another of its products, Aiskrim Minda Genius 30+, claims to blend “brain food” such as almonds and saffron, in addition to the above sunnah ingredients. Which kid would not like a cone of ice cream that makes him or her smarter too?

Here is a picture of the Ottoman governor of Athens in 1815 (a decade and a half before the Greeks won independence).

London’s Muslim Mayor is nothing New: 1300 yrs of Muslims who Ran Major European Cities
 

The press is declaring Sadiq Khan, victor in the electoral contest for mayor of London, the “first Muslim mayor of a major European city.”

They mean of course, something like ‘the first Muslim mayor of a really big Western European city in the modern period (say the past two centuries). [Although Sadiq Khan was elected and many — not all– of the figures I point to below were appointed, that’s the way it was in history. The then London County Council was first elected in 1889, and the mayor has only been directly elected since 2000; all urban leaders were appointed until fairly recently.]

It is worthwhile pointing out that the idea of Europe as “Christian” or perhaps “post-Christian” is a construct that can only be carried out by applying very large scissors to the history books. Christian nativism in Europe makes no sense. Christianity has its origins in the Middle East, as does Islam.

Europe was largely uninhabited during the last maximal glaciation, roughly from 25,000 before present to 13,000 BP, what with three mile high piles of ice covering much of it. Since the ice receded, it has seen several waves of immigration, with people coming in from what is now Turkey and Syria (yes) and from Eurasia and from Africa.

Christianity only started spreading seriously in Europe from the fourth century CE [AD], and by the eighth century, only four hundred years later, it had serious competition in Spain and southern France from Islam. Christianity was adopted more slowly than most people realize, with large pockets of essentially pagan survivals and heresies lasting for hundreds of more years– so medieval European religion should be seen as tripartite in these centuries — pagan survivals, spreading Christianity, and spreading Islam.

Islam is a major European religion and is a nearly 1300 year old tradition there.

Sitting elected Muslim mayors include Erion Veliaj of Tirana, Ahmed Aboutaleb of Rotterdam, and Shpend Ahmeti of Pristina. Muslim-majority Sarajevo elected Ivo Komšić, a Christian, in 2013.

Going back into history, parts of Spain, and often quite a lot of it, were under Muslim rule 711 to 1492. So for example, Abd al-Rahman I was proclaimed Emir of Cordoba in 756. We’re talking major Western European city here. In the 900s Cordoba was the most populous city in the world.

The Arab Muslim emirate of Sicily lasted from 831 to 1072. For example, Jafar al-Kalbi (983–985) was emir of Sicily, and therefore mayor of Palermo, the capital.

The Ottoman Empire ruled most of what is now Greece 1458-1832.

Black in Algeria? Then You’d Better Be Muslim

In the West, racists see skin colour. In Algeria, they see religion.
 

ORAN, Algeria — For a few years now, families of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have been gathering at major street crossings in the large cities of northern Algeria. They come to beg for alms, wearing grotesque outfits: oversize veils for the women, even little girls; cotton djellabas for the men; prayer beads ostentatiously displayed. They say “Allah” too readily and misquote verses from the Koran.

Many black migrants, including those who are not Muslim, are deploying symbols of Islam to appeal to Algerians’ sense of charity. Why? Because poverty helps decode culture better than reflection does, and migrants, lacking shelter and food, are quick to realize that in Algeria there often is no empathy between human beings, only empathy between people of the same religion.

Another example: In October a Cameroonian woman was gang-raped in Oran by a group of men that threatened her with a dog. When she tried to file a complaint with the authorities, she was rejected on two main grounds: She had no papers, and she wasn’t a Muslim.
The Marie-Simone case became a cause cιlθbre, and the victim, with the support of some Algerians, eventually obtained justice. But it remains an exception.

The situation wasn’t always like this. For decades Algerians mostly treated blacks with discreet aloofness; only recently has that turned into violent rejection. There are no reliable official statistics, but many migrants here come from Mali, Niger and Libya, and their numbers have increased over the past few years, partly due to instability in neighboring countries, especially Libya, once a main hub of immigration from Africa to Europe.

KB says: Looking for something sweet with a cup of tea after your Tarawee prayers or at Sehri time, this date and nut loaf could be an ideal. Like your savories for Ramadaan it can be prepared ahead of time and frozen.