Op/Ed, New York Times by Richard Clarke
The last month has seen a remarkable series of events that focused the public and news media on America's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism from radical Islamists. This catharsis, which is not yet over, is necessary for our national psyche. If we learn the right lessons, it may also prove to be an essential part of our future victory over those who now threaten us.
But how do we select the right lessons to learn? I tried to suggest some in my recent book, and many have attempted to do so in the 9/11 hearings, but such efforts have been largely eclipsed by partisan reaction.
April 25, 2004
The Wrong Debate on Terrorism
By RICHARD A. CLARKE
The last month has seen a remarkable series of events that focused the public and news media on America's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism from radical Islamists. This catharsis, which is not yet over, is necessary for our national psyche. If we learn the right lessons, it may also prove to be an essential part of our future victory over those who now threaten us.
But how do we select the right lessons to learn? I tried to suggest some in my recent book, and many have attempted to do so in the 9/11 hearings, but such efforts have been largely eclipsed by partisan reaction.
One lesson is that even though we are the world's only remaining superpower — as we were before Sept. 11, 2001 — we are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam — not a "clash of civilizations" between East and West — is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.
I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war. But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility.
What we have tried in the war of ideas has also fallen short. It is clear that United States government versions of MTV or CNN in Arabic will not put a dent in the popularity of the anti-American jihad. Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration's much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival.
We must also be careful, while advocating democracy in the region, that we do not undermine the existing regimes without having a game plan for what should follow them and how to get there. The lesson of President Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah of Iran in 1979 should be a warning. So, too, should we be chastened by the costs of eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein, almost 25 years after the shah, also without a detailed plan for what would follow.
Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue, while safe-guarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counter-weights to Osama bin Laden and the radical imams. Fashioning a comprehensive strategy to win the battle of ideas should be given as much attention as any other aspect of the war on terrorists, or else we will fight this war for the foreseeable future. For even when Osama bin Laden is dead, his ideas will carry on. Even as Al Qaeda has had its leadership attacked, it has morphed into a hydra, carrying out more major attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than it did in the three years before.
The second major lesson of the last month of controversy is that the organizations entrusted with law enforcement and intelligence in the United States had not fully accepted the gravity of the threat prior to 9/11. Because this is now so clear, there will be a tendency to overemphasize organizational fixes. The 9/11 commission and President Bush seem to be in a race to propose creating a "director of national intelligence," who would be given control over all American intelligence agencies. The commission may also recommend a domestic security intelligence service, probably modeled on Britain's MI-5.
While some structural changes are necessary, they are a small part of the solution. And there is a risk that concentrating on chain-of-authority diagrams of federal agencies will further divert our attention from more important parts of the agenda. This new director of national intelligence would be able to make only marginal changes to agency budgets and interactions. The more important task is improving the quality of the analysts, agents and managers at the lead foreign intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency.
In addition, no new domestic security intelligence service could leap full grown from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security. Indeed, creating another new organization while we are in a key phase in the war on terrorism would ignore the lesson that we should have learned from the creation of Homeland Security. Many observers, including some in the new department, now agree that the forced integration and reorganization of 22 agencies diverted attention from the missions of several agencies that were needed to go after the terrorists and to reduce our vulnerabilities at home.
We do not need another new agency right now. We do, however, need to create within the F.B.I. a strong organization that is vastly different from the federal police agency that was unable to notice the Al Qaeda presence in America before 9/11. For now, any American version of MI-5 must be a branch within the F.B.I. — one with a higher quality of analysts, agents and managers.
Rather than creating new organizations, we need to give the C.I.A. and F.B.I. makeovers. They cannot continue to be dominated by careerists who have carefully managed their promotions and ensured their retirement benefits by avoiding risk and innovation for decades. The agencies need regular infusions throughout their supervisory ranks of managers and thinkers from other, more creative organizational cultures.
In the new F.B.I., marksmanship, arrests and skill on the physical training obstacle course should no longer be prerequisites for recruitment and retention. Similarly, within the C.I.A. we should quash the belief that — as George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told the 9/11 commission — those who have never worked in the directorate of operations cannot understand it and are unqualified to criticize it.
Finally, we must try to achieve a level of public discourse on these issues that is simultaneously energetic and mutually respectful. I hoped, through my book and testimony, to make criticism of the conduct of the war on terrorism and the separate war in Iraq more active and legitimate. We need public debate if we are to succeed. We should not dismiss critics through character assassination, nor should we besmirch advocates of the Patriot Act as fascists.
We all want to defeat the jihadists. To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11.
Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, is the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror."
As Condoleezza Rice prepares for her long-awaited testimony before the commission investigating al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11th attacks, a look at Israel's experience with terrorism is instructive. It may shock Americans to learn that Israeli leaders freely admit that the growth of Hamas was partly a tragedy of their own making. Israel made a conscious decision to allow the Islamist movement to grow in the West Bank and Gaza in the early 1980s, hoping that this would undermine support for Yasser Arafat's PLO. "In retrospect we made a mistake," former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer told the daily Maariv last week.
The Israeli military administration in the territories had prohibited the PLO from operating openly, but it was instructed to allow the Islamists the freedom to establish a large-scale religious-welfare-political infrastructure. The Islamist welfare effort, which gave Hamas a claim on the hearts and minds of Palestinians living under occupation, was, of course, driven by an agenda even more poisonous than the PLO's to Israel's interest. But, says Ben Eliezer, "by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late."
BERLIN, April 7 -- A Moroccan man who is the only person ever convicted of aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers was freed by a court in Hamburg Wednesday pending a retrial.
Mounir Motassadeq, 30, walked from the courthouse one month after an appeals court panel ruled that his first trial had been compromised by the judges' failure to adequately consider the U.S. government's refusal to provide evidence from an al Qaeda operative it holds in secret custody.
President Bush will answer all the questions of a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House spokesman said today, suggesting that the president will be more flexible in his approach to the commission.
Commission members said late last month that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the commission, saying that they would meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush would submit to only a single hour of questioning.
Three American Muslims were convicted Thursday for a conspiracy to aid the Taliban in its fight against U.S. troops, convictions that will result in the longest prison terms the government has obtained in its war on terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
...
Bernie Grimm, who represented Khan, said the case was the result of "9-11 hysteria."
"If I thought Mr. Khan had any role in aligning himself with Islamic extremists, I never would have represented him," he said. "This has to do with John Ashcroft, with George Bush getting re-elected. ... Today I'm embarrassed to be an American."
Three Convicted in Va. Jihad Case
By Matthew Barakat
Associated Press
Thursday, March 4, 2004; 6:43 PM
Three American Muslims were convicted Thursday for a conspiracy to aid the Taliban in its fight against U.S. troops, convictions that will result in the longest prison terms the government has obtained in its war on terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The government obtained convictions on all of the most serious charges it filed against the three men: Masoud Khan, 32, of Gaithersburg, Md.; Seifullah Chapman, 31, of Alexandria; and Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35, of Falls Church. All three face a potential maximum of life in prison.
All three were acquitted on some lesser firearms charges and charges of commencing an expedition against a friendly nation.
Khan, who faced the most serious charges, was convicted of conspiracy to levy war against the United States and conspiracy to contribute services to the Taliban. All told, he faces a maximum of life plus 50 years, and related firearms convictions require mandatory minimum sentences of 90 years.
Chapman and Abdur-Raheem were convicted of providing material support to a Pakistani terrorist organization called Lashkar-e-Taiba and firearms charges. Chapman faces a manadatory minimum sentence of 35 years; Abdur-Raheem does not face a mandatory minimum.
Prosecutors said the three were part of a "Virginia jihad network" that used paintball games in 2000 and 2001 to train for holy war around the globe. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the group turned its intentions toward America, and several members, including Khan, traveled to Pakistan in the days after the attacks to train with Lashkar in the hopes of joining the Taliban and fighting against the United States.
Two defendants -- Chapman and Abdur-Raheem -- testified in their own defense and said the paintball games were innocent fun and fellowship among a group of Muslim friends. Chapman admitted attending the Lashkar camp in August 2001 but said he did so not to train for holy war but for a grueling physical challenge in the rugged Pakistani mountains.
Khan did not testify, but his lawyers denied any hostile intent.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who imposed the convictions, said she did not believe Chapman and Abdur-Raheem's testimony.
"I could not find the testimony of the two defendants credible," calling their assertions that they were unaware of any hostile intentions "deliberate ignorance."
All three defendants waived their right to a jury trial, leaving Brinkema to decide guilt or innocence.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the convictions are "a stark reminder that terrorist organizations are active in the United States. ... We will not stand by as United States citizens support terrorist causes."
Abdur-Raheem's father, King Lyon, said the government's case was "cerebral," meaning prosecutors tried to read the minds of the defendants and show hostile intent.
"As far as my son is concerned, not for one minute do I believe that he had in his head any intent to do harm to this country," Lyon said. "The guilty verdict was based on this broad conspiracy. Let's hope this doesn't happen again and let's hope this serves as a warning to everyone that these are different times we live in."
Muslim activists, at a press conference outside the courthouse, echoed Lyon's sentiment that American Muslims are treated with unfair suspicion by the Justice Department since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Shaker Elsayed, secretary general of the Muslim American Council, said the verdicts were an example of "U.S. Justice Department rule by paranoia."
Bernie Grimm, who represented Khan, said the case was the result of "9-11 hysteria."
"If I thought Mr. Khan had any role in aligning himself with Islamic extremists, I never would have represented him," he said. "This has to do with John Ashcroft, with George Bush getting re-elected. ... Today I'm embarrassed to be an American."
Because of the mandatory minimum sentences, Khan and Chapman will receive significantly longer terms than "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, who struck a plea bargain in the same courthouse in July 2002 that resulted in a 20-year sentence. The core charge against Lindh -- providing support to the Taliban -- is identical to one of the core charges against Khan.
U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said after the verdict he was extremely pleased with the convictions, and said it is improper to compare this charge to other terror cases.
"I think the results of this case speak for themselves," McNulty said.
A fourth defendant, Caliph Basha ibn Abdur-Raheem, had been acquitted on all charges earlier in the trial after Brinkema said she saw no evidence linking him to the conspiracy in any meaningful way.
Six members of the alleged conspiracy have already pleaded guilty to various charges, receiving prison sentences ranging from 4 years to 11 1/2 years. Five of those who struck pleas testified for the prosecution.
KARLSRUHE, Germany, March 4 — A German appeals court ordered a retrial Thursday for Mounir el-Motassadeq, the only person successfully prosecuted for involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Complaining that crucial evidence had been withheld by the German and American authorities, a five-judge panel threw out the year-old conviction of Mr. Motassadeq and sent the case back to the lower court in Hamburg, which had sentenced him to 15 years in prison on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder.
The U.S. assault on al Qaeda has "transformed the organization into a loose collection of regional networks working autonomously," Tenet said. The smaller groups "pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks," but they share an anti-American goal. Tenet Warns of Al Qaeda Threat By Dana Priest Despite U.S. success in attacking al Qaeda's hierarchy, the network is still capable of "catastrophic attacks" against the United States, and acquiring chemical, biological and radiological weapons remains a "religious obligation" in Osama bin Laden's eyes, CIA Director George J. Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee yesterday. The U.S. assault on al Qaeda has "transformed the organization into a loose collection of regional networks working autonomously," Tenet said. The smaller groups "pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks," but they share an anti-American goal. The most immediate threats include the possibility of "poison attacks" and al Qaeda's ongoing effort to produce anthrax material, Tenet said. He added: "Extremists have widely disseminated assembly instructions for an improvised chemical weapon using common materials that could cause a large number of casualties in a crowded, enclosed area." "We are still at war against a movement," said Tenet, appearing with other administration officials to discuss global security threats. "People who say it's exaggerated don't look at the same world I look at. It's not going away anytime soon." In Iraq, most attacks by insurgents have been committed by loyalists of the former government, said Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He added that "it appears much of the Sunni population has not decided whether to back the coalition or support the insurgents. The key factors in this decision are stability and a future that presents viable alternatives to the Baathists and Islamists." At the same time, he said, foreign fighters have carried out "some of the most significant attacks," including suicide bombings. "Left unchecked," Jacoby said, "Iraq has the potential to serve as a training ground for the next generation of terrorists." The testimony came in the administration's annual worldwide threat assessment, which aims to give Congress a broad view of national security threats and the status of U.S. responses to them. It was the first time Tenet appeared on Capitol Hill since controversy intensified over his agency's prewar assessments of Iraq, and he was peppered with questions by Republicans and Democrats about CIA assertions that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and had an advanced nuclear program, none of which have been found. "People voted to authorize the use of force based on what we read in these reports," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Finding no weapons of mass destruction is "a pretty bitter pill to swallow with respect to the value of intelligence, particularly in a preemptive war." Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) pressed Tenet even harder, saying the decision to go to war in Iraq was based on "either bad intelligence or misleading the people." Tenet shot back: "We are not perfect, but we are pretty damn good at what we do, and we care as much as you do about Iraq and whether we were right or wrong." For the past eight months, the House and Senate intelligence committees have been examining the intelligence community's prewar analysis of the Iraq threat. The Senate committee plans to issue the first of its two reports next month and, according to Senate officials, it will be highly critical of Tenet and the CIA. President Bush recently appointed a commission to probe the same matter, with a mandate to look at the broader question of the CIA's ability to track weapons proliferation. Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) questioned Tenet about his Feb. 5 speech at Georgetown University, which included his declaration that CIA analysts "never said there was an imminent threat." Tenet's speech was a response to criticism of prewar intelligence and to those who say the Bush administration portrayed as imminent the threat posed by Iraq's weapons and links to terrorists. "If it wasn't an imminent threat, in your mind, how would you have characterized or assessed the threat at that point in time?" Snowe asked yesterday. "I would have characterized it as something that was grave and gathering, something that we were quite worried about, quite worried about the nature of surprise," Tenet answered. ". . . And so you would agree with the characterizations that were made by the president, the vice president, Secretary Powell, in that respect," Snowe asked. "I just characterized what I think, how I was thinking about this at the time. . . . I haven't parsed everybody's words, and I don't want to do that." ". . . But, I'm just wondering then, do you think that we made a -- we then took this action in Iraq on a lesser standard than 'imminent'?" Snowe asked. "Well, I don't want to go back," Tenet said. " . . . See, now we're -- we're now into a realm of what all the policymakers were thinking about this, and I don't want to go back and parse their words." Jacoby, Tenet and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III all answered "yes" when asked if the United States is safer now than right after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But they each went on to describe an interlocking web of terrorist organizations that have found common cause against the United States since then. Mueller said subways and bridges in major cities and airlines continue to be al Qaeda targets. "There are strong indications that al Qaeda will revisit missed targets until they succeed," Mueller said, "such as they did the World Trade Center. And the list of missed targets now includes both the White House as well as the Capitol." He said that while the bulk of al Qaeda supporters in the United States help with fundraising, logistics and recruitment, some have been involved "in operational planning." Jacoby said hijackings and attacks with portable, shoulder-fired missiles against civilian aircraft remain prominent concerns. "A number of factors virtually assure a terrorist threat for years to come," Jacoby said. "Despite recent reforms, terrorist organizations draw from societies with poor or failing economies, ineffective governments and inadequate education systems." "Demographic bubbles" of young people "further burden governments and economies," he said, mentioning a number of countries where a high proportion of the population is under 15: Saudi Arabia, with 43 percent; Iraq, 41 percent; Pakistan, 39 percent; Egypt, 34 percent; Algeria, 33 percent; and Iran, 29 percent. © 2004 The Washington Post Company
CIA Chief Says Group Is Fragmented but Still Dangerous
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 25, 2004; Page A01
The United States Justice Department grossly mismanaged the war on terror and exaggerated its success in fighting terrorism, a federal prosecutor alleges in a lawsuit against attorney-general John Ashcroft.
The allegations come from Richard Convertino, the lead prosecutor in the first major post-September 11, 2001 prosecution which resulted in the conviction of three members of an alleged terrorism sleeper cell in Detroit.
The suit charges that a senior official in the Justice Department's terrorism and violent crimes section told Convertino that positive news reports concerning the department's success against terrorism efforts were overblown.
"The press gives us more credit than we deserve," the lawsuit quotes the official as telling Convertino.
From correspondents in Washington
19feb04
The United States Justice Department grossly mismanaged the war on terror and exaggerated its success in fighting terrorism, a federal prosecutor alleges in a lawsuit against attorney-general John Ashcroft.
The allegations come from Richard Convertino, the lead prosecutor in the first major post-September 11, 2001 prosecution which resulted in the conviction of three members of an alleged terrorism sleeper cell in Detroit.
The suit charges that a senior official in the Justice Department's terrorism and violent crimes section told Convertino that positive news reports concerning the department's success against terrorism efforts were overblown.
"The press gives us more credit than we deserve," the lawsuit quotes the official as telling Convertino.
Covertino also accuses his employers of "gross mismanagement", in the war on terror, with heavy-handed officials at Justice Department headquarters in Washington hindering prosecutors in the field.
The 42-year-old prosecutor says his repeated pleas for assistance were ignored and alleges there was a "lack of support and cooperation, lack of effective assistance, lack of resources and intradepartmental infighting" in terrorism cases.
"These concerns directly related to the ability of the United States to effectively utilise the criminal justice system as a component in the 'war on terrorism'," the lawsuit said.
Attorney-general John Ashcroft frequently praised the Detroit case as a success in the war on terror, but the case has recently begun to unravel.
Convertino is facing an internal Justice Department investigation for failing to disclose relevant information to the defence, including an allegation that the government's key witness was lying, until long after the trial ended in June 2002.
Convertino claims the Justice Department is retaliating against him because he has attacked its efforts in the war on terror, and is seeking damages under the Privacy Act in the suit.
David Frum, a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A journalist and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, he is the author of The Right Man: An Inside Account of the Bush White House and An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, written with Richard Perle.
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Frum/frum-con0.html
SEATTLE - A Seattle-raised Muslim convert who aided the Taliban was sentenced to two years in prison Friday, getting a break for helping authorities with other investigations in the war on terrorism.
James Ujaama, 38, pleaded guilty last year, admitting he delivered computer equipment and a recruit to Taliban officials in Afghanistan.
With time already served behind bars, he could be free this summer.
"In the future, I will act more responsibly and make the right choices," the American-born Ujaama told U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein.
GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
SEATTLE - A Seattle-raised Muslim convert who aided the Taliban was sentenced to two years in prison Friday, getting a break for helping authorities with other investigations in the war on terrorism.
James Ujaama, 38, pleaded guilty last year, admitting he delivered computer equipment and a recruit to Taliban officials in Afghanistan.
With time already served behind bars, he could be free this summer.
"In the future, I will act more responsibly and make the right choices," the American-born Ujaama told U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein.
Ujaama was arrested in 2002 following an investigation into a Seattle mosque and was indicted on charges he conspired to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore. Those charges were later dropped.
He instead pleaded guilty to the aiding-terrorism charges and was offered a two-year sentence in exchange for his cooperation in terrorism investigations.
Specifically, authorities were looking for information about London cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, a suspected terrorist. Ujaama befriended him in London in the 1990s and ran al-Masri's Web site, which advocated holy war against the United States. Ujaama also admitted that at al-Masri's bidding, he escorted a man to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
Al-Masri is wanted in Yemen for his alleged role in the 1998 kidnappings of 16 Western tourists, four of whom died in a shootout.
The judge said she was initially surprised by the light term called for in Ujaama's plea agreement. But she said she also had never seen a case where a defendant had agreed to provide such extensive cooperation.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday: "Our highest priority is to disrupt the networks of terror, and the information gained from individuals like Ujaama helps us protect innocent Americans from terrorist attacks."
Ujaama was born James Earnest Thompson in Denver. He converted to Islam in the early 1990s and became involved in the Dar-us-Salaam mosque in Seattle, whose members preached an extreme version of Islam.
He tried to travel to Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks but was unable to cross the border from Pakistan.
The Islamic headscarf has become one of the most hotly disputed items of clothing in Europe. The French parliament has approved legislation to ban it from state schools, and politicians in Germany and Belgium want similar laws.
BBC News Online asked eight commentators for their views on imposing a ban on the headscarf. Click on the quotes below to read more and use the form to tell us what you think.
Alain Destexhe, Belgian politician
Fareena Alam, UK magazine editor
Amir Taheri, Paris-based Iranian writer
Rachida Ziouche, Algerian exile in France
Fanny Dethloff, Lutheran clergywoman
Alice Schwarzer, German feminist
Binnaz Toprak, Turkish academic
Tariq Ramadan, Islamic affairs analyst
Alain Destexhe is a Belgian senator who, inspired by developments in France, has proposed a bill that would see headscarves banned from state schools.
We are certainly not trying to stamp out multi-culturalism. But we are very anxious that the conflicts of the world are not brought into the classrooms, and that is why we support the French legislation and are trying to introduce a similar law in Belgium.
For one, public spaces should be neutral spaces, not places to spread a particular view of the world. Secondly we have a duty of care to children who enter the public school system, and there is certainly an issue that young Muslim women are often forced into wearing the headscarf by those around them.
Therefore while some allege that we are taking away their individual freedoms, in some cases we will actually be restoring it. We want individuals to be integrated, and we want Muslim women to be viewed and treated as equals.
I am not wholly confident that the legislation will pass in Belgium, as it has proved very controversial. What people seem to forget is that nobody is seeking to regulate what people do in their private spheres, merely to stipulate that in the public sphere, certain rules must apply. And it is better that these decisions are taken by a democratically elected government, than leaving the matter to individual schools to decide upon.
Fareena Alam is the editor of Q-News, Europe's leading Muslim magazine.
Modesty is only one of many reasons why a woman wears a scarf. It can be a very political choice too. I began wearing it at the age of 21, against the wishes of my family, while serving as president of the United Nations Students' Association at university. I wanted to assert my identity and counter common stereotypes about Muslim women. A woman who wears a hijab can be active and engaged, educated and professional.
Isn't it the fundamental secular standard - that one cannot demand that any individual surrender an unobtrusive religious observance?
Fareena Alam
There are many women, from Iran and Saudi Arabia for example, who have had very negative experiences with gender oppression in their home countries. They bring this vitriol to the debate about the hijab. This is not only unacceptable to me, it goes against their own secular principles of freedom and choice. Does this democratic society have any room for a British-Muslim woman like me who chooses to wear the hijab on my own terms? Isn't it the fundamental secular standard - that one cannot demand that any individual surrender an unobtrusive religious observance?
The terms of reference that define secularism can and must shift to remain relevant in a world that is constantly changing and diversifying. Isn't the idea of what it means to be French or British constantly evolving?
Amir Taheri is an Iranian author and journalist based partly in Paris.
The headscarf ban is a political move and I don't think the government is right. It has nothing to do with the broader issue concerning the six million Muslims in France.
At least three-quarters of the French Muslim population are North African Arab, who are experiencing the same problems as the Black-Americans in the US.
The proposed law is making a mountain out of a molehill
Amir Taheri
They lack opportunity and are mostly parked in huge Stalinist suburbs around large cities - it is almost like living in hell.
Rather than focusing on the issue of the scarf, the government should be focusing on these problems. You can't solve them by passing such a law - by standing outside a school gate and tearing the scarf off the heads of girls.
The proposed law is making a mountain out of a molehill. Not that many Muslims wear it in France, or anywhere else for that matter. There are 1.8 million French Muslim school girls and, according to 2002 government statistics, only around 2,000 of those wore the scarf. Out of those, only 157 girls refused to remove when told to do so.
Rachida Ziouche, a journalist, is the daughter of an Algerian imam who has been living in exile in France since fleeing her homeland.
Where I live, in a small town in France, girls and young women are intimidated by Muslim men who oblige them to wear the scarf. These Muslim women are often isolated, and need some protection. The law to outlaw the veil goes some way towards addressing this need.
France wants its people to live together, celebrating their diversity, but it also has a secular tradition to protect
Rachida Ziouche
Of course there has been criticism - some people say that France is discriminating against its Muslim community, trying to stop them from being themselves. I simply do not believe this to be the case. France wants its people to live together, celebrating their diversity, but it also has a secular tradition to protect - one which seeks to keep religion from the public sphere. And anybody who says that it is removing their religious freedoms, I say this: do you really believe a four-year-old is wearing the headscarf by choice?
I strongly believe that people coming from the Middle East to live in Europe must adhere to the law of the land and respect the traditions of the country they have come to live in. Many of the people who come seem to think that the only person they have to obey is God.
Others say that the veil is the wrong target - that the real issue is the alienation of the Muslim community in France, poverty and unemployment. The two are not mutually exclusive. The government must certainly act on the economic issues, but it must also try to alleviate the oppression of young Muslim women.
Alice Schwarzer is a prominent German feminist.
This issue is about the constitution, and the division between state and religion - a hard fought for achievement of the enlightenment. The weakening of this division is utterly incomprehensible, particularly as it comes at a time when the worldwide offensive of the theocrats is not just making countries with Muslim majorities subservient to their inhumane "holy laws", but is also threatening democracies worldwide. Countries like France have long grasped the consequences of this.
The passiveneness of politicians leaves the majority of Muslim women in Germany powerless against the militant minority of fundamentalists
Alice Schwarzer
The Green politician in charge of immigrant affairs, Marieluise Beck has the cheek to warn of a "demonisation" of the headscarf, that a ban on headscarves in schools will "push Muslim women into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists". In fact the opposite is the case: the passiveness of politicians leaves the majority of Muslim women in Germany powerless against the militant minority of fundamentalists.
Fanny Dethloff is a pastor at a Hamburg church and is responsible for refugee issues in the community
It makes absolutely no sense at all to bar Muslim women from public places because they wear the scarf. This kind of exclusion prevents these women gaining access to jobs, stops them from being integrated. It does nothing for emancipation - indeed, by shutting out those women who are trying to better themselves, it has quite the opposite effect.
Cracking down in this way is only likely to lead to a sense of victimisation, which will fuel extremism, not reduce it
Fanny Dethloff
Of course we want to condemn fundamentalism, but we don't do that by punishing the women - it is not the women who are involved with pushing this kind of intolerant, politicised Islam, it's the men. At a time like this we need more understanding, more tolerance, not less. And indeed, cracking down in this way is only likely to lead to a sense of victimisation, which will fuel extremism, not reduce it.
It is also problematic to assume, as some people do, that women are forced into wearing the scarf by overbearing men. While it is certainly the case that some are pressured into putting it on, many Muslim who wear it do it quite self-consciously. We need to respect their wishes, not ourselves oppress them by trying to make them take it off.
Binnaz Toprak is a political science professor at Bosphorous University in Istanbul, Turkey, a secular country with a Muslim majority.
I think they have got it right in France. Civil servants and schoolgirls should not wear the veil. Personally, I am against it, it is a symbol of the inferior status of women in Muslim countries. In many situations, males have great authority over under-age girls and we cannot be certain that the girls are wearing the hijab because they want to or because their fathers and brothers are forcing them to. They should, therefore, be protected.
Personally, I am against it, it is a symbol of the inferior status of women in Muslim countries
Binnaz Toprak
In the case of civil servants, I think that when people refer to someone in government office, they should be able to feel that they will not be discriminated against because they do not share the same beliefs as that civil servant. A headscarf could be seen as a symbol of those beliefs.
The issue in Turkey at the moment is whether university students should be allowed to wear the hijab. Many students wear it for political reasons but others wear it for religious reasons and I think that choice should be respected.
Tariq Ramadan is a professor of Islamic Studies and Philosophy at Switzerland's Ecole de Geneve and University of Freibourg.
Muslims in France believe they are being targeted. They fear the law banning scarves in schools will open the door to all kinds of discrimination. The French debate about the issue is so passionate that Muslims fear a new type of Islamaphobia.
Many Europeans are afraid of losing their identity
Tariq Ramadan
The real issue should not be a question of law but of how to build a pluralistic society. This involves facing up to shared responsibilities. Muslims have to understand that the argument about protecting the secular nature of the state is something very specific to the French psychology.
They need to be more explicit in the way they present themselves and their religion and be fully involved in their society. At the same time, fellow citizens, need to understand that to build a pluralistic society they need to know more about others, to be ready to be out-centred from their values and principles.
It needs good will and education. This is not the feeling we have in France, or even Europe as a whole, at the moment. The reality in Europe is of a growing Muslim population, and many Europeans are afraid of losing their identity. The debate in France and other countries over the headscarf appears to be a manifestation of this, and it doesn't help.
Muslims should see the ban in France as a sign that the road ahead is not going to be easy but it is not the end of the road. It is just the beginning of the dialogue.
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The veil in itself is just a piece of tissue, what counts is what is behind it. These women who so insist upon it should be ashamed of not respecting and throwing away with their stupidity and narrow-mindedness all the hard efforts other women of their own culture, their own religion have made, very often sacrificing their lives to get a better life for ALL women.
Elize, Arlon Belgium
I really cannot understand what the fuss is about. Why is it always considered ok to wear less, but if someone likes to cover everyone becomes alarmed? After all this upheaval, one really starts to suspect that Western culture is indeed exploiting women as sex symbols, and not being allowed to do so by a small minority is perceived as a major threat?
Anna, Tehran, Iran
I cannot see any sense in the prohibition or ban on the Muslim headscarves. Is secularism the NORM, ideology and the "religion" of modern France or EU? Any one who does NOT conform to its "religion" of "laicite" or is it "laicism" has to be proscribed! Why? Is this not another form of fanatical intolerance in the guise of the so called secularism!
Eliseo Mercado,OMI, Rome, Italy
It is a symbol and a human right that is being banned. Remember the public labelling of Mentally & Physical Disabled, Communists, Homosexuals, and others in Nazi Germany? In a rights based culture that is the Free West, there is no place for persecution based on beliefs. Greater problems than merely clothing need to be addressed. Ridiculous.
Christopher Donovan, Perth, Australia
Does anyone really believe that this will stop women being forced to wear the hijab by their families and peers? If the law prevents them wearing headscarves in public, they will only be forced to cover up the moment they get home. This law will offend those who want to wear headscarves, crucifixes or other symbols of their religion, and only benefit those who are somehow offended by seeing the symbols of other people's beliefs in public.
Maria, Aldershot, UK
I'm afraid the ban will be seen to be discriminatory. After all, if the objection is to religious symbols, why don't the authorities ban Christians from wearing crosses on a chain around their neck? They say they will do so if the cross is too conspicuous, but that is unfair on Muslims and other religions; they suffer just because their religious symbols happen to be more visible.
Saurabh, Delhi, India
We live in a secular West. No headscarves in schools! The veil is to silence, to make invisible and to subjugate women. It is the mark of oppression.
Lili Ann Motta, E. Marion, NY/ United States
Yes, I strongly believe that the scarf should be banned. It is a symbol of female oppression and has no place in a modern society. Those who insist on wearing scarves should return to their native country.
R. Johns, Singapore
It is a shame that many ignorant people seem to feel that Muslim girls should have forced upon them the 'freedom' to be leered at like a piece of meat as many of our own daughters are before unromantic encounters in an alley on their way home from the club they just got wasted in.
Adam Ward, Bristol, UK
The idea that people should be forced to wear, or not to wear, any particular style of clothing by the state or by their religion is preposterous. This is a clear breach of the rights of the individual which I hope we will never accept in this country. To justify forcing people not to wear a garment on the basis that they are being forced to wear it, and therefore need to be forcibly freed from that, is just stupid and goes nowhere in addressing the real problems of this world.
Gabriel Lee, Hertford, England
What bothers me is how an "enlightened" "democratic" and secular society can dictate what women wear. Ironically, France is taking such a Patriarchal approach to the situation in the guise of Secularism.
Ahmad, Boston
The headscarf poses no threat to any social order but in fact encourages moderate behaviour.
Asim Mirza, Stoke - England
This entire debate is starting to border very close to the absurd. Legislating what can and cannot be worn within France's "secular" society and schools is at the polar end of the absurdity of compulsory veiling. What do about term holidays then? If France is so adamantly a secular nation, then perhaps they should centre their term holidays around random periods of the year, go to school on Christmas Day and Eid al-Adha, etc. How far can it possibly go? The headscarf does not threaten the achievements of the Enlightenment or national identity: what threatens the achievements of the enlightenment are governments who micromanage their citizens and feminists who are "allergic" to Islam.
Alexandra, London
If Muslim women and girls are forced to wear the scarf by male relatives and a law is passed banning it in public places, won't those same male relatives refuse to allow the women to leave the house if they can't wear the scarf? This law may have the effect of making their lives more restricted, not more open.
Sandra S., New York, USA
By Tom Heneghan
PARIS (Reuters) - France's National Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to banish religious emblems from state schools, a measure meant to keep tensions between Muslim and Jewish minorities out of public classrooms.
Deputies voted 494 to 36 to ban Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses and to expel pupils who insisted on wearing them. It will not apply to private schools.
The government says the ban does not single out any religion, but cabinet ministers acknowledge its main targets are the Islamic headscarves and anti-Semitic remarks from Muslim pupils that teachers say have become more frequent.
"After this debate and the magnitude of this vote, both the republic and its secularism have been reinforced," Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told deputies.
"What is at issue here is the clear affirmation that public school is a place for learning and not for militant activity or proselytism," Assembly Speaker Jean-Louis Debre said.
It was the first reading of the bill, which must go to the Senate and then back to the National Assembly for final approval in mid-March, which now should be just a formality.
The key passage of the law, which schools would apply from September, reads: "In primary and secondary state schools, wearing signs and clothes that conspicuously display the pupil's religious affiliation is forbidden."
"This will not solve the problem," said Lhaj Thami Breze, president of the large Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF). "Who will decide what's conspicuous and what's not?"
He said the UOIF would urge schoolgirls to opt for discrete head coverings such as bandannas or caps and hoped these would be accepted at school. "It's unfortunate that the whole nation is so preoccupied with a simple piece of cloth," he remarked.
Nicholas Perruchot, a centrist UDF deputy who voted against the bill, said: "The law will not be applicable and the disputes will not diminish."
RISING RACISM, ANTI-SEMITISM
The ban has wide public support in France, which has the largest Muslim and Jewish minorities in western Europe.
Leaders of France's 5 million Muslims denounce it as discriminatory and likely to stigmatize veiled schoolgirls. It has provoked criticism from Muslim and Christian leaders abroad, including Pope John Paul II.
Jewish leaders have been split over the ban, with those in favor seeing it as a bulwark against the militant Islam they see spreading in poor neighborhoods with mixed populations.
Lord Greville Janner, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, said in London it was a sad decision which "disgracefully punished the entire Muslim population and other religious communities."
Before the vote, Education Minister Luc Ferry said France had witnessed a "spectacular rise in racism and anti-Semitism in the last three years" and the ban would help to keep classes from dividing into "militant religious communities."
He said the law would also make clear pupils could not object to or skip classes for religious reasons.
Teachers have complained in recent years of problems with Muslim pupils who interrupt history classes to deny the Nazis slaughtered Jews, boycott classes on human reproduction because they are "immodest," or refuse to attend physical education.
It was not clear if France would also ban Sikh turbans, which the country's 5,000 Sikhs say are not religious symbols.
In Kuala Lumpur, about 40 supporters of the fundamentalist Islamic PAS, the biggest opposition party in mainly Muslim Malaysia, protested against the law outside the French embassy chanting "Long live Islam" and "Crush the infidels."
A Hamburg court today acquitted a Moroccan man of helping the September 11 hijackers after rejecting a dramatic last-minute motion for new evidence by a lawyer for relatives of American victims of the attacks.
Abdelghani Mzoudi was cleared of more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and charges of belonging to a terrorist organisation.
Presiding Judge Klaus Ruehle said the five-judge court – which freed Mzoudi in December on evidence that suggested he had no knowledge of the plot to attack the United States – had to give him the benefit of the doubt.