(TheClarionPrject)
UK Channel 4 said its Ramadan programming was an intentional act of 'provocation' to anyone who associates Islam with extremism.
Muslims across Europe are marking the end of Ramadan, the month considered by Muslims to be holy, which, in accordance with the lunar calendar, this year fell between July and August.
Ramadan was a major topic for public discussion, and the month-long holiday received heavy press coverage from print and broadcast media in all parts of Europe -- a reflection of the rising influence of Islam across the continent.
Muslim leaders sought to leverage the media attention to showcase Ramadan -- a time when Muslims refrain from taking food or water between sunrise and sunset -- as the peaceful nature of Islam in Europe.
Muslims were supported by European multiculturalists – who, when it comes to Judaism and Christianity, are staunch enforcers of secularism. They made great efforts to draw up guidelines, issue instructions and carve out special privileges to ensure that Muslims were not offended by non-Muslims during the festival.
As in past years, Ramadan-related controversies also fuelled heated debates in many countries.
In Britain, for example, Channel 4 became the first mainstream British television channel to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer (adhan) live each morning during Ramadan (see video here). Channel 4 also broadcast a series of programs about Ramadan called "Ramadan Diaries" which explored how British Muslims "cope with the physical and spiritual effects of fasting."
Channel 4 said the special Ramadan programming was an act of "deliberate provocation" to anyone who associates Islam with extremism.
In an article at the Radio Times, a media trade publication, Channel 4 senior executive Ralph Lee said the broadcaster was giving a "voice to the under-represented" Muslims in Britain and that if it were not for heroic actions of Channel 4, the "vast majority of people in Britain" would not be aware of the "mass act of personal sacrifice and worship" that occurs during Ramadan.
Lee also said Ramadan was of greater interest to its viewers than the "blanket coverage" given to the 60th anniversary of the Queen's Coronation by its rivals in June 2013. Lee added: "And let's not forget that Islam is one of the few religions that's flourishing, actually increasing in the UK. Like Channel 4's target audience, its followers are young. It's recently been reported that half of British Muslims are under 25."
Not surprisingly, Muslims welcomed Channel 4's decision. Anjem Choudary, a radical Muslim hate preacher who has long campaigned to bring Islamic Sharia law to Britain, said he was in favor of any move to promote Islam "Islam," he added, "is the fastest growing ideology in this country. By some accounts Britain could be a Muslim country by 2015."
Abu Zakariyya, of the radical Islamic Emergency Defence group, added as well: "We want to see Sharia law in the UK and only God knows if this could be a step towards it."
Also in Britain, a teacher at the Charles Dickens Primary School in Portsmouth, Hampshire, refused to allow a 10-year-old non-Muslim pupil to drink water at school on one of the hottest days of the year because it was unfair to Muslim students who were observing the Ramadan fast.
The mother of the child,
Kora Blagden, said: "A [Muslim] child who is fasting had a headache and the teacher said it would be unfair if the other children drank in front of the pupil. They normally have their bottles on their table but they were kept in a tray by the teacher. Luke was dehydrated when he got home …"
Meanwhile, the London-based Guardian newspaper called on non-Muslim students to "practice their own controlled fasts during the Ramadan period in support of their Muslim friends."
In Finland, the taxpayer-funded Finnish Broadcasting Company, known by its Finnish acronym YLE, was accused of removing a documentary critical of Islam from its website.
The politically incorrect documentary, which was removed from the YLE website just days before it was to be aired during Ramadan, is about the forgotten women of the Arab Spring. Among other topics, the documentary describes the public rapes of women in Egypt.
YLE defended its move with the following statement: "Yle Areena has limited the viewing of the online documentary due to the distressful content." Finnish bloggers said the real reason for the censorship was because the documentary is critical of the low status of woman under Islam.
In Germany, Muslim mobs ushered in the beginning of Ramadan with three nights of rioting in Hamburg. The unrest began on the evening of July 12 when more than 150 Muslim youths attacked police and burned cars in Altona, the westernmost district of Hamburg. More than 100 riot police were deployed to restore order. An 11-minute video of the Hamburg unrest, with cries of Allahu Akbar [Allah is the Greatest]. can be viewed on YouTube,
In Eisenhüttenstadt, a German city near the border of Poland, a gang of Islamic radicals attacked a young Muslim couple for violating the Ramadan fast. During the incident, at least ten Chechen jihadists broke into an apartment at the asylum seekers facility in Eisenhüttenstadt and beat the couple, who are refugees from Chechnya, to the point that the woman suffered a miscarriage. According to local police, Chechen gangs have a history of enforcing Islamic Sharia law in the city.
Meanwhile, the German news agency Deutsche Welle reported that German military canteens have adapted to Ramadan and altered their menus to provide Muslim soldiers with foods that are prepared according to Islamic Sharia law. According to Deutsche Welle, army canteens are better equipped than many other large kitchens to prepare food for Muslim and non-Muslim soldiers separately: "The cooks use separate forks and ladles and make sure that the meat is stored separately. And if we grill together, the cooks always have some aluminum foil with them, so that the turkey breast doesn't touch the bacon."
In Spain, Muslims got into a heated argument over whether or not a rock music concert held on a public square is compatible with Ramadan. The imbroglio occurred in Melilla, a Spanish exclave on the northern coast of Morocco, where Muslims make up more than 50% of the city's population, and where the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice) has been officially recognized as a public holiday since 2010.
As in years past, municipal authorities in Melilla invited several North African rock and fusion bands to play at taxpayer-funded evening music concerts for Muslims to celebrate the breaking of the daily fast.
This year, however, Muslim leaders expressed outrage at what they said was an offense against Islam. Municipal authorities gave in to the pressure and moved the music concerts to a location away from the center of the city, not to cause offense.
In Salamanca, a city in northwestern Spain, Muslim prisoners led at least four uprisings at the Topas Penitentiaryduring Ramadan. Prison officials say the daily fast during Ramadan "habitually has a negative influence on the nerves of Muslim prisoners" and there exists a "high degree of tension" between Muslim and non-Muslim prisoners at the facility, presumably because the latter are not observing the Ramadan fast.
Meanwhile, the largest daily circulation newspaper in Spain, El País, published an opinion article by the president of the Union of Islamic Communities in Spain, Riaÿ Tatary Bakry. Entitled "Ramadan and Society," in it Bakry writes that Ramadan is now a fact of life in Spain, and he urged non-Muslim Spaniards to get used to the new reality by educating themselves about Islam.
Bakry also urged Spanish employers to make special exceptions for Muslim employees during the month of Ramadan. He wrote that non-Muslim bosses and colleagues need to understand the "peculiarity of total fasting -- all liquids and solids, from sunrise to sunset -- which is about seventeen hours without drinking or eating at this time of year near the summer solstice."
Bakry called on Spanish employers to give Muslim employees additional breaks from work during Ramadan, and appealed to "all Spaniards to adapt to these changes during Ramadan, which is just one more normal holiday, a cause for celebration for all."
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