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SHAFAQNA – A third of the mosques in the Netherlands have experienced at least one incident of vandalism, threatening letters, attempted arson, the placement of a pig’s head, or other aggressive actions in the past 10 years, according to research by Ineke van der Valk, an author and researcher at the University of Amsterdam.

On February 27, in the Dutch city of Enschede, a 33-year-old man threw a petrol bomb at a mosque as adults and children worshipped inside.

The perpetrator was caught by non-Muslims living near the mosque and has since been charged with arson with terrorist intent.

Two days before this attack, Azzedine Karrat, the imam at the Essalaam mosque in Rotterdam, received a letter addressed to the mosque.

“Pigs,” said the text, followed by more insults. The letter waed the recipients to expect “important visitors” and included Nazi symbols.

“I was quite shocked. Personally, I see this as a message from the far right,” Karrat told Al Jazeera. About 20 mosques countrywide received similar letters.

“I’m worried, but it is not about me or the mosque, but about Muslims in general. I am worried about the situation in the country. It says something about the dislocation in the Netherlands. It is not a message that brings people together,” the imam said.

Like many Muslims, he thinks that the threats and attacks on mosques are a result of fear and frustration among the non-Muslim population following the attacks in Paris.

It is unclear, however, whether aggression towards Muslims is increasing as the police only started to record the specifically anti-Muslim nature of such attacks and discrimination in 2015. Initial findings are due to be published this summer.

The initiative to register the motives behind attacks and discrimination towards Muslims in the Netherlands came from Ahmed Marcouch, a member of the House of Representatives for the Dutch Labour Party.

“We are likely to see an increase in the number of incidents because people have been made more aware of the problem, partly thanks to social media, and are encouraged to report such incidents,” he told Al Jazeera. “In the past, imams would have maybe thrown away such a letter without reporting it.”

Apart from the threat posed by extremists, Marcouch thinks that the refugee crisis is also polarizing Dutch society and boosting the popularity of right wing politicians, such as Geert Wilders, who leads the anti-Islamic Freedom Party.

“This polarization is worrisome,” Marcouch said. “It is a sentiment that has been building up for years, starting from the attacks of 9/11, the murder of Theo van Gogh, the hundreds of Dutch extremists that have joined ISIL and now the refugee crisis. At first the influx of refugees was opposed, but even that has increasingly shifted to an opposition against other ethnic groups, particularly Muslims.”

The Netherlands took in about 59,000 refugees last year, almost double the number that arrived in 2014. Several demonstrations opposing the arrival of refugees have tued violent, dead pigs have been placed near asylum centres and local politicians have been threatened.

Jeyantha Kathiravelu is a member of the local municipal council in Sliedrecht. The 20-year-old received threats after a council meeting about the possibility of opening an asylum seekers’ centre.
The threats were sent mainly by email and via social media and ranged from statements such as, “Dirty Muslim, go back to Morocco”, and “I hope you will be the refugees’ first victim”.

She said she was “very shocked” by the threats and believes that they must have come from somebody she knows socially.

“What worries me most is that it must have been one of my Facebook friends,” she said.

Kathiravelu, who is not Muslim and whose parents were refugees who fled Sri Lanka before she was bo, said she is sometimes harassed on public transport, with people telling her to go back to her own country, and on social media by people Idea on the colour of her skin.

She feels afraid, she said. “I rather not walk on the street in the evening. It makes me feel vulnerable. The situation has deteriorated in the last nine months. It seems there is no more reasonable middle ground.”

But she remains optimistic. “Eventually we housed 35 refugees in an empty school for a few months. When they had to leave people protested that the refugees should stay.” The neighbourhood wanted to help “their” refugees to stay in Sliedrecht during the whole asylum procedure.

Imams Karrat and Slimani spoke of similar experiences. Both have witnessed initial protests against their mosques tu into good neighborly relations after reaching out to the local community.

“When we opened our mosque in 2014 we held an open weekend and invited the local community. Nearly 4,000 people visited the opening of our mosque, nearly all of them non-Muslims. Even many people who initially opposed the mosque came, and eventually changed their opinion,” Slimani said.

“We are an active part of Dutch society. We should stay together and not allow extremists from both sides to divide us.”

SHAFAQNA – Arab evangelicals respond to a mode update of Muhammad’s Medina Charter.

With the lilt characteristic of a Southe megachurch pastor, Bob Roberts Jr. introduced the most significant Muslim statement on religious freedom in 1,400 years.

“I am a Texan, an evangelical, and a Baptist,” the NorthWood Church leader told the crowd of more than 250 leading Muslim clerics from around the world. “You have made my job to build bridges so much easier. You have gathered to call people to change.” He drew hearty applause.

The Marrakesh Declaration, launched in Morocco this January, is a clear English-Arabic condemnation of terrorism and a pledge to better promote religious liberty.

“It is a very promising initiative. You could even say it is groundbreaking,” said Medhat Sabry, the Anglican Communion’s dean for Morocco and one of several non-Muslim observers (alongside Roberts) to the declaration’s signing. “But it is way too early to tell.”

This is because—from Cairo to Amman to Nazareth to Baghdad—the news caused barely a ripple in Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa, whom the document is meant to comfort. Some Arab Christians saw a headline in the local news. Others didn’t hear of it at all.

One who did was Andrea Zaki, president of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches. He joined Sabry in praising the declaration.

“At a moment of radicalization, this is a moderate voice,” he said, noting the legal reference to UN declarations in both language versions.

“But to be honest, the situation is beyond a document. They should develop a mechanism to make sure it is widely spread.”

Until it is, Roberts—with degrees from Southweste Baptist and Fuller seminaries—and his Virginia-based Muslim partner, Magid Mohamed, are raising funds to travel the world and spread its message.

Shortly after attending the Marrakesh conference, Roberts left his 2,100-member congregation in Keller, Texas, to travel to Pakistan and address more than 1,000 leaders at mosques and churches. Together, they strategized how to further reach the grassroots.

“Imams and pastors are the gateway to the community,” he said. “If this stays only at the geopolitical level, it will change nothing.”

The Muslim scholars who gathered in Morocco recognized this, tailoring the Arabic declaration to include many references to Islamic sources. It grounds the call in the Charter of Medina, the Prophet Muhammad’s A.D. 622 agreement with Jews and Christians to live together and respect religious rites.

The declaration calls on politicians and clerics to reinforce the concept of citizenship, and on educators to review curricula to address material that instigates extremism. (For example, a 10th grade textbook in Amman, Jordan, teaches that God commanded Muhammad to fight all mankind, and that only by joining Islam would their lives be spared.)

“The Marrakesh Declaration is most encouraging and shows that only moderate Islam can confront extremist Islam,” said Imad Shehadeh, president of Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary, noting similar efforts such as 2007’s A Common Word and 2014’s Letter to Baghdadi.

Those documents tried to place the call for jihad in its historical context to show that it doesn’t apply today, he said. Unfortunately, the statements bypassed essential source material in the Qur‘an, the Hadith, and the Life of Muhammad.

“A new and convincing hermeneutic is what Islam desperately needs,” said Shehadeh. “But it seems that a call to moderate Islam is a call for Islam without Islam.”

Azar Ajaj of Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary was encouraged by the declaration. But it also left him with questions: Can it limit current chaos? Can it change Islamic teachings that say an apostate must be killed?

Ajaj appreciates the emphasis on building bridges, but wonders about the history. By A.D. 627, five years after Muhammad’s charter, the prophet expelled the Jews from Medina. On his deathbed, he is said to have forbidden non-Muslims from Arabia. And his second successor, Umar, drove them out.

“I hope [the declaration] will have a lasting impact,” said Ajaj. “But if the [ancient] charter was a good one, why did it not work out better? If this is true of Medina, what about Marrakesh?”

Islam does have a history of tolerance, said historian Wageeh Mikhail, head of the Center for Middle Easte Christianity at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo. His best example is Baghdad, in the Abbasid caliphate of the ninth century.

Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Sunni, and Shia all had a share in this golden age, translating the Greek heritage into Arabic to produce a stunning civilization. If doctrinal differences are put aside, he said, an ethos of shared flourishing could be resurrected.

“Islam prospers when it is diverse, and the key is plurality and respect,” Mikhail said. “But this needs humility from everyone, especially the one who has the power.”

Today, Baghdad appears the exact opposite of humble. Two weeks after the Marrakesh Declaration, Iraq’s govement hosted a conference called the Protection of Peaceful Coexistence. But Iraqi Christian leaders boycotted over conces about a religious ID law and continued seizing of Christian properties.

“The problem is to put it into practice, beyond political words,” said an Iraqi clergyman who requested anonymity. But he appreciated the declaration, which he said could be a “tuing point.” Like Mikhail, he said much depends on who sits on the throne.

“It gives a beautiful face to Islam,” he said. “But this face varies between countries and eras. Will all these nations keep to what they have promised? I have a big question mark.”

Most Arab Christians share his appreciation—and skepticism. But for Roberts, too much is at stake not to champion Marrakesh.

“I love Jesus and want Christians to help the world know him by loving their neighbor and spreading peace,” he said. “Shame on me if I ignore this opportunity and do not push the ball.”

SHAFAQNA – Human Rights First today urged President Obama to take steps to increase the transparency of the targeted killing program. The call came in a letter from Human Rights First President and CEO Elisa Massimino one week after the administration announced they would publicly release casualty assessments and a redacted version of the Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG) for strikes outside areas of active hostilities.

“In order to ensure that this announcement signals a new chapter of transparency about the use of lethal force in counterterrorism operations, it will be vital that the information released is sufficiently detailed to enable Americans to understand the nature of the targeted killing program, how targeting decisions are made, and the legal justifications for those decisions,” wroteMassimino.

Last week the Obama Administration announced that it will provide casualty assessments for strikes going back to 2009 and then going forward on an annual basis. Human Rights First notes that this information, including the data on past drone strikes, is essential for fully evaluating the legality of the program. Human Rights First urges the administration to release data on casualty assessments that is sufficiently detailed to enable Americans to understand the nature of the targeted killing program, how targeting decisions are made, and the legal justifications for those decisions. In particular, the organization urges that the casualty assessments:

• Identify the procedures used to conduct post-strike investigations;
• Specify the criteria used to classify a person as a combatant or civilian;
• Name the organized armed group to which a deceased individual allegedly belonged;
• Provide the domestic and inteational legal justification for the strike;
• Disaggregate the data by strike location and date; and,
• Describe the policies and procedures for providing compensation when civilians are killed.

Human Rights First notes that confidence in the U.S. targeted killing program also depends on full clarity about its goveing laws and the measures taken to ensure that civilian casualties are minimized. To this end, the organization also called on the president to ensure that redactions to the PPG be as minimal as possible, and that any legal analysis or memoranda related to the use of lethal force be made public. Authority for conducting targeted killing strikes should be transferred from the CIA to the Department of Defense, and the administration should undergo a a comprehensive strategic review of the effect of lethal strikes outside of zones of active hostilities to assess their broader impact.

“Drone strikes are not per se illegal, and their use can be legitimate in situations of armed conflict. But the global proliferation of armed drones without a concomitant dedication to transparency, accountability, and the rule of law poses profound threats to national security and human rights,”wrote Massimino.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry testifies at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 8, 2014. Kerry squarely blamed Russian agents on Tuesday for separatist unrest in easte Ukraine, saying Moscow could be trying to lay the groundwork for military action like in Crimea. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)

SHAFAQNA – Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that ISIS has been committing genocide against religious minorities in the Middle East — just the second time the executive branch has used the term in relation to an ongoing conflict.

The formal designation comes days after the House passed a non-binding resolution by a 393-0 vote condemning ISIS atrocities as genocide.

“Daesh is genocidal by self proclamation, by ideology and by actions,” Kerry said in a televised address, using another name for the Sunni militant group. “We must recognize what Daesh is doing to its victims.”

“Naming these crimes is important but what is essential is to stop them,” he added.

He enumerated a list of atrocities against Shiite Muslims, Christians and Yazidis at the hands of the Sunni extremists that led to the designation.

“Daesh is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities,” Kerry said, noting that it was impossible to know the full scale of the extremists’ atrocities.

Kerry took care to highlight the plight of the Yazidis, a Kurdish minority ISIS branded as devil worshipers and who have been killed and starved by the thousands.

Many were saved with the help of the U.S. but “not before Daesh captured and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women and girls, selling them at auction, raping them at will, and destroying the communities in which they had lived for countless generations,” the secretary of state said.

Kerry also gave examples of Shiites and Christians being slaughtered, forced to flee their homes and compelled to convert to ISIS’ extreme version of Sunni Islam.

Christian groups had heaped pressure on lawmakers to ensure ISIS actions against members of the religion were included in any consideration of genocide.

The Obama administration had come under pressure for its reluctance to use the term genocide, which is strictly defined under inteational law.

Kerry’s announcement came after Congress demanded the State Department determine if ISIS atrocities constituted a genocide.

Fireworks erupted at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last month when lawmakers grilled Kerry over why the State Department had not yet branded ISIS massacres of Christians a genocide.

“The whole world knows Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Califoia Republican and frequent critic of the Obama Administration, said at the hearing.

Congress had set a March 17 deadline for the State Department to issue its findings. The State Department had said Wednesday it would not meet the deadline, though Kerry on Thursday said he had judged that a genocide was in fact taking place.

“One element of genocide is the intent to destroy an ethnic or religious group, in whole or in part,” Kerry said. “The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians; Yezidis because they are Yezidis; Shia because they are Shia… Its entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology. ”

While the move was welcomed by religious groups, the decision applying to the group’s treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in areas it controls in Syria and Iraq is laden with ethical and legal questions.

A key issue facing the administration is whether it will be obligated to take action to stop the genocide.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner previously had said a genocide determination in ISIS’ case “would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States.”

Although the U.S. is already involved in military strikes against ISIS and has helped halt episodes of ethnic cleansing, some experts argue that the determination would require more actions by the U.S.

At least, a determination would probably be accompanied by a referral to the Security Council for possible prosecution by either the Inteational Criminal Court or some other tribunal that might be set up specifically for Syria and Iraq.

Kerry stressed Thursday he was “neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor jury” — but that the distinction needed to be made to reassure ISIS victims that the U.S. “recognizes and confirms the despicable nature of the crimes that have been committed against them.”

The first genocide designation during a time of war was in 2004, when Secretary of State Colin Powell determined that atrocities being committed in Sudan’s Darfur region constituted genocide.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton rejected requests to categorize the mass murder, rape and displacement of Rwandan Tutsis at the hands of Hutus in a genocide. Hundreds of thousands were killed in Rwanda as the world looked on.

It wasn’t until Dec. 23, 2003 that the violence was designated a genocide such by the United Nations.

SHAFAQNA – Five years into a revolution which ambitioned to transform and reform Bahrain kingdom island into a buoyant democracy, hundreds of thousands of Bahrainis live in fear – repressed in their faith, oppressed in their yeaing for social justice and equality.

Lost in the middle of oil rich monarchies, pro-democracy activists’ voices have been lost in a sea of authoritarianism, bogged down by harsh crackdowns and so-called security measures against their claim to political self-goveance. Still, rights defenders have refused to give up. Animated by a desire to see manifest popular will, a defiant few continue to defy a system which legitimacy is rooted in its political alliance with powerful House of Saud.

A geopolitical jewel sitting at the heart of the Persian Gulf, Bahrain represents too much of a prize for Saudi Arabia to ever consider losing its influence over; especially when its nemesis, Iran, appears to hold sway over the island’s political opposition. A reactionary theocracy, Saudi Arabia has long held Iran its religious and political arch enemy – the dragon to be smite for the kingdom to stand everlasting.

While many experts, and even state officials have perpetuated the view that it is faith, which sits at the core of Saudi Arabia and Iran upset, it is in fact clashing geopolitical ambitions which have fed the fire of enmity in between those two regional giants.

Failing to frame Bahrain unrest within a hegemonic perspective very much equates to missing the point altogether.

“Bahrain today stands very much a pawn stuck in a dangerous game of thrones,” said Samuel Pascali, an independent researcher with Veritas-Consulting. He added: “The real danger which Bahrain faces today is actually revolutionary misrepresentation … most media have toed the editorial line Riyadh presented, thus allowing for Bahrainis’ voices to be dismissed, and their message perceived as violent and sectarian. Bahrain’s entire revolution has been misconstrued. Bahrain uprising was not about the takeover of Bahrain Shia majority against the ruling Sunni majority, BUT democratic empowerment for all.”

Those voices which are being silenced

While Manama has often argued matters of national security when cracking down on those activists, the inteational community has had to face to the often deplorable human rights violations: acts of torture, unlawful imprisonment and stripping of nationality.

In its World Report 2015 Human Rights Watch wrote: “Bahrain’s courts convicted and imprisoned peaceful dissenters and failed to hold officials accountable for torture and other serious rights violations. The high rate of successful prosecutions on vague terrorism charges, imposition of long prison sentences, and failure to address the security forces’ use of lethal and apparently disproportionate force all reflected the weakness of the justice system and its lack of independence.

Human rights activists and members of the political opposition continued to face arrest and prosecution, and the govement invested itself with further powers to arbitrarily strip critics of their citizenship and the rights that attach to it.”

This March, another such violation was committed against prominent rights defender, Zainab al-Khawaja, daughter to prominent opposition member, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is currently serving a life sentence for “insulting the king.”

A report by the Guardian read; “Police in Bahrain have detained prominent political activist, Zainab al-Khawaja and her one-year-old son on the fifth anniversary of a violent crackdown against protesters in which Saudi and Emirati soldiers were used. The detention of Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of a prominent activist serving a life sentence over the 2011 demonstrations.”

The report further read: “The developments show the conces of Bahrain’s Sunni rulers over the continuing low-level unrest still gripping the Shia-majority country. Last week, the Arab League declared Hezbollah a terrorist organisation amid a widening dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

While such a statement exemplifies those political realities corporate media have been keen to project they do not offer a reflection of the truth – but rather expose the very narrative Gulf monarchies have worked to weave to better justify, and rationalize their campaign against pro-democracy protesters and rights activists.

A symbol of resistance in Bahrain the al-Khawaja family has suffered more than most, the scapegoats of a system which is determined to crush all, and any calls for reforms in the name of geopolitical hegemony. “Sectarianism in Bahrain, like in many other countries in the Persian Gulf has been used as a weapon of mass-destabilization and self-segregation,” waed analyst Pascali in exclusive Idea.

He added, “The infamous Sunni-Shia divide Persian Gulf monarchies have claimed continue to plague the region, has been used to de-legitimize people’s calls for reforms, and yeaing for democratic institutions.”

Unilateral sectarianism

If sectarianism has been rife in Bahrain, its language has emanated from the palace of al-Khalifa, and not the streets of Bahrain. Bahrainis are not calling for the rise of a Shia state, but that of a democratic one, where all people are offered the same rights and obligations under the law.

Al-Khalifa regime has worked tirelessly to silence Shia Muslims in Bahrain as they happen to be on the very end of the regime’s sectarian wrath. Victimized and ostracized on account of their faith, Bahrain’s Shia majority has lived in repression and oppression for decades.

As Shia Muslims and vocal critic of the regime al-Khawaja family has been persecuted for its stance for several decades.

Officers carrying video cameras raided the home of Khawaja’s in-laws before coming to her apartment in the capital, Manama, taking her and her son Abdulhadi to a local police station, according to her sister and fellow activist, Maryam, who lives in exile in Denmark. Their mother, Khadija al-Musawi, corroborated her account, as did Khawaja’s husband.

Bahraini officials did not immediately comment on the detention. But it comes as Khawaja faces three years in prison on a number of charges, including several involving her tearing up pictures of Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Her sister later said officers had a warrant and that Khawaja would likely be taken to prison to begin serving her sentence.

By Catherine Shakdam for Shafaqna

SHAFAQNA – One of the most esteemed women in our history, her life was an example to humanity her conduct was angelic, her modesty exemplary. Join us as we find out about the secret of Allah – Fatima (a.s.)

This documentary is an Ahlulbayt TV production

SHAFAQNA  – The German embassy in Ankara and consulate general in Istanbul have been shut down due to a terror waing, the Foreign Ministry said.

The German school in Istanbul has also been closed, the ministry said.

The closures of the consulate and school have been made following a waing that was “not conclusively verifiable,” according to an email sent by the German consulate to its citizens, DPA reported. The email added that the facilities would be closed as a precaution on Thursday.

The German consulate is near Taksim Square, a major tourist and leisure district in Istanbul.

Earlier on Thursday, a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) splinter group called the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility for the deadly attack in the capital Ankara that killed 37 people and injured dozens.

The blast on Sunday was caused by an “explosive-laden vehicle,” according to the goveor’s office in Ankara.

The attack is revenge against the Turkish authorities for its military operation in the country’ southeast, according to the group. Ankara’s campaign was launched in summer 2015, and has resulted in civilians’ deaths.

In their previous statement, the militant group claimed responsibility for the blast in Ankara that killed at least 29 people in February.

The TAK said that it has severed ties with the PKK. The latter, in tu, has reportedly denied having any control over the TAK.

In recent months Turkey has been stepping up a military crackdown in its southeaste regions, populated predominantly by Kurds. Erdogan has vowed to continue the military campaign until the area is cleansed of PKK militants.

In January, a suicide bomber carried out an attack in central Istanbul, killing 12 German tourists. The explosion happened on Sultanahmet Square, close to the Sultanahmet tram stop and the Dikilitas Obelisk of Theodosius in the heart of Istanbul’s historic tourist district.

SHAFAQNA – Syrian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Suleiman al-Abbas announced on Wednesday that well No. 7 in Saddad gas field, 60 km southeast of the city of Homs, will be put into service during the next 24 hours with a total production capacity of 500 thousand cubic meters of gas per day.