exploring muslim identities in europe & north america

Recently, Charlie Hebdo featured a cartoon that purportedly provided commentary on the refugee situation and accusations of sexual misconduct in Germany by controversially depicting Aylan Kurdi—the three-year-old Syrian boy whose tragic drowning captured global attention—as a grown "pig-faced" individual chasing "white" women. The questionable caption asks what Aylan might have grown up to become, implying he would be an assailant in Germany. The illustration, created by Laurent Sourisseau, who is the magazine's current director and a survivor of the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo's offices, appears to underscore the claims that refugees, including Syrians, were among the perpetrators of the sexual assaults reported in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve. Despite the claims of Charlie Hebdo that it champions a "healthy critical attitude," the overtly provocative nature of the cartoon borders on sheer sensation-seeking. Indeed, misinterpreta...

PROPUST KOJI JE UGROZIO SVIJET Činjenice koje trebate znati o Islamskoj državi An article by Sanja Despot partly drawing upon a public lecture I gave at Lund University on the Islamic State and on a short interview with me on the implications of the Paris attacks (in Serbo-Croat). Published in tportal on 21.11.2015 Tijekom jedne od racija u iračkoj Faludži 2004. američke snage su u zatvor Bucca privele grupu ekstremista, među kojima i do tada nepoznatog tridesetogodišnjaka Ibrahima Avada Ibrahima al Badrija, danas poznatijeg pod imenom Abu Bakr al Bagdadi. 'Bio je skitnica kada smo ga pokupili 2004. Nismo imali kristalnu kuglu koja bi nam kazala da će on jednog dana postati glava ISIL-a', ispričao je prošle godine za New York Times neimenovani dužnosnik Pentagona. U spomenutom članku se konstatira da je razvoj samoproglašenog kalifa Islamske države bio direktno uvjetovan pogrešnim američkim akcijama u Iraku Da se Amerika nije 2003. upustila u iračku avanturu, ISIL-a danas ne b...

Today, in The Guardian's ' Comment is Free ' columns, Seumas Milne argues 'denying a link between western wars in the Muslim world and the backlash on our streets only fuels Islamophobia and bloodshed'.  In what will be seen by many as a controversial argument, Milne re-establishes the obvious (or what should have been obvious) link between the war on terror , its 'dehumanization' and transmutation into a war where borders are irrelevant on the one hand and terrorist attacks such as the one that took place in Woolwich last May. To say these attacks are about "foreign policy" prettifies the reality. They are the predicted consequence of an avalanche of violence unleashed by the US, Britain and others in eight direct military interventions in Arab and Muslim countries that have left hundreds of thousands of dead. Only the willfully blind or ignorant can be shocked when there is blowback from that onslaught at home. The surprise should be ...

A couple of days before the horrific Woolwich events, I was checking the Quilliam Foundation website - a site that has proved to be a reliable barometer of trends in  a government-sponsored industry that claims to have the answer to  islamic radicalism. The 'in the media' section of the website featured on the entry page was dominated by a striking headline on Boston:  Boston, the latest 'Triumph' of a Global Jihad Brand . Less than 48 hours later, the terrible news of the Woolwich attack on the unfortunate British soldier reached me  My first reaction was one of horror, and I think I was not alone in feeling and thinking in this way. How can something like this happen in the middle of a busy neighbourhood in the capital of the country? Especially after Boston, is this 'solitary' type of violence going to become the pattern of 'terrorism'? And, upon reflection, could one speak of a terrorist crime in this instance? In some ways, the effect of th...