A ruling by a Berlin court allowing a 16-year-old Muslim pupil to pray towards Mecca in a separate room at school has raised questions about the extent of religious freedom in Germany.  Some media, including the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, describe the ruling as a landmark case, saying it is the first time a German court has considered whether the right to practise religious beliefs should extend to schools.

The case arose in 2007 when the head of a school in Berlin, which has a strong secular tradition, forbid a boy and his friends from kneeling on their jackets to pray where they could be seen by other pupils.

The school argued it was religiously “neutral” but the boy, whose mother is Turkish and father is a German who converted to Islam, decided to go to court.

And they won.

Judge Uwe Wegener of Berlin’s Administrative Court wrote: “The plaintiff credibly showed he feels a religious obligation to pray according to Islamic custom five times a day at specific times.”

In the ruling, which makes clear the boy must pray outside lesson times to avoid disruption, the court also said Germany’s constitution guaranteed an individual the right to manifest one’s belief — which includes praying.

The case raises some interesting questions, including to what extent a Muslim can be flexible in delaying prayers and whether an institution like a school should have to put aside rooms for worship.

Religious leaders of various faiths welcomed the court decision. The KRM Coordinating Council for Muslims in Germany said it was pleased about the respect shown towards other peoples’ beliefs. “The ruling confirms the confidence Muslims have in our rule of law,” it said.

Stefan Foerner, spokesman for Berlin’s Roman Catholic archdiocese, was quoted in the popular daily Bild as saying the ruling strengthened the freedom of religious expression.

But media also reported teachers are worried the decision may encourage pupils to demand new prayer rooms in schools.

Berlin, home to Germany’s largest Muslim community, may be a slighly special case due to an institutionalised secular streak — for example, it is one of Germany’s only states to have compulsory ethics lessions and only optional religion courses.

How flexible should schools and individuals be about prayers?

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Remember all the talk about France banning the burqa and niqab Muslim veils for women a few months ago? That project is now in the parliamentary inquiry phase, a six-month fact-finding mission expected to wind up late this year and produce a draft bill to outlaw them. That’s the way France handled it in 2003 when it wanted to stop Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to state schools. But the process seems more complex this time around. There’s less passion and more hesitation in the debate. A smooth progression from the inquiry to the ban and to its implementation no longer looks assured.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab outside a public library in Ronchin, northern France, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

To get a feel for the debate, I dropped by the panel’s latest open hearing late on Tuesday and listened to the arguments being made. Five mayors from suburbs with Muslim minorities were due to speak to the panel, which is led by a Communist deputy named André Gerin who makes no bones about his view that a ban is needed. Mayors like these men play a key role in an issue like this, because they are on the front lines dealing with social change and are taken seriously when they clamour for change. Several are also deputies in the National Assembly - France allows them to occupy multiple offices - so they can easily lobby at the national level for something they want.

Sitting alone at the press table in the committee room, I soon saw why the drive towards a ban seems to be hitting some bumps. The mayors don’t know what they want. All think something has to be done, but most are worried that an outright ban wouldn’t work. Here’s my news story on the session.

This was the fifth of 16 hearings planned by the panel, which is officially called the Mission d’information sur la pratique du port du voile intégral sur le territoire national (Fact-finding mission on the practice of wearing the full veil on national territory). They’ve already heard representatives of women’s right groups, spokespeople of associations defending France’s secular system, a Muslim women’s rights advocate and two Muslim intellectuals and they plan to visit the ethnically mixed suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Lille and Marseille. You can often predict what will be said, but not always - some of the militant secularists turned out to be against a burqa ban because it meant the state interfered with personal choice.

(Photo: A televised session of the panel/National Assembly)

To give you a better feel for the debate, here’s a summary of my notes and quotes from the session:

*Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois and chairman of the Association of Mayors of French Cities and Suburbs, said “the veil concerns the issue of women’s dignity and it’s clearly a brake on integration”. Within his association, though, “views (about a ban) are divided. Lots of officials are talking about the risks of passing a law. They’re concerned about political and civic risks.”

“Who’ll be responsible for enforcing this law? There’s a lot of concern about this.” France did not necessarily need a law, he said, but “it’s important that the Republic reasserts its values in a strong symbolic manner … It would be a mistake to look at the full veil just from the religious angle. There are socio-economic causes as well.  People are taking refuge in identities.”

“We’d have lots of difficulty trying to enforce a law on the ground. Now, the police in Clichy-sous-Bois don’t even issue parking tickets in some areas at some times… There has been a strong rise in religious demands. We mayors can’t be left alone with this. This is happening several times a day. You can’t make a strong statement defending the Republic now without being called an Islamophobe.”

*Jean-Pierre Blazy, mayor of Gonesse north of Paris, admitted: “I’m hesitant. I can’t say today that we need a law. But we shouldn’t just dump the problem on the mayors. We need a firm dialogue to make secularism come alive in this country.” He stressed that he supported the 2004 headscarf ban and was concerned about growing religious demands by Muslims for exceptions to the usual municipal services. “If we have a law, we have to have accompanying measures with it,” he said, to make the measure more palatable to Muslims. One measure he suggested was to teach Arabic in state schools.

(Photo: Veiled woman shopping in Roubaix, near Lille, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

*Renaud Gauquelin, mayor of Rillieux-La-Pape near Lyon, said there were very few veiled women in his town but growing problems with Muslim demands in pools, hospitals and schools. On veils, he said: “Is this a regression for the rights of women in France? Certainly. Is there a parallel development for men? No.”

“I’m tending towards a law,” he said, noting that laïcité, the legal separation of church and state, was written into the constitution, as were women’s rights, and failing to ban the veil would amount to a failure to defend those rights. “What sign would we give to women around the world? To Iranian women fighting for their freedom? To Saudi women who want to be able to drive a car?”

*Jean-Yves Le Bouillonnec, mayor of Cachan south of Paris, thought existing laws would be enough to deal with the burqa issue. “If we pass a law, how would we enforce it? What would the sanctions be for violating it? There could be no worse message to send than to pass a law and tell people to obey it without saying they will be punished for not obeying it… I can’t see a ban working. It’s extremely complex and almost completely inapplicable.”

He suggested the National Assembly might want to pass a strong resolution reaffirming republican principles.

*Xavier Lemoine, mayor of Montfermeil east of Paris, said some Muslims in his town were becoming “reislamised” and this was visible in a rise in veil wearing and pressure some Muslims put on co-religionists who don’t fast during Ramadan. “It’s not always in the poorer areas, but also in the middle class areas that you see these demands,” he said. He noted that the full veil was not required by the Koran “but it’s in the Sunnah”, France had to take a strong position against the veil and understand how Islam was different from Western traditions. “In Judeo-Christian society, the individual is predominant. In the Muslim world, the individual exists through belonging to a community. The weight of the community is terrible.” At the same time, officials should separate Islam from its fundamentalist fringe when analysing religious issues.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab walks near Eiffel Tower in Paris, 24 June 2009/Gonzalo Fuentes)

Still, he was also hesitant about voting for a ban. “I prefer to do nothing for a good reason than something for a bad reason.”

Several panel members had questions or observations for the invited mayors.

*André Gerin, a Communist deputy, head of the fact-finding panel and former mayor of Venissieux suburb of Lyon, called full veils “medieval customs spread by salafists”. The veil was the I in an Islamisation drive by radical Muslims. Gerin said France should not only consider a ban on full veils but also go after “the gurus” who are not in these neighbourhoods but are spoiling everything”. (BTW Gerin gave no details about who he meant by “gurus”, a term usually used by Hindus and Sikhs. But they call all full veils burqas, using the Afghan term, even though almost all of them worn here are Arab-style niqabs. Go figure.)

*Jean Glavany, a Socialist deputy, said fundamentalism was part of all religions these days. “This idea of separating the fundamentalists from the religion doesn’t work. To say that fundamentalist excesses have nothing to do with the religion is like saying hooliganism has nothing to do with football or doping has nothing to do with the Tour de France.”

“We should refuse to make legislators into exegetists.”

*Jacques Myard, conservative UMP deputy and mayor of Maisons-Lafitte northwest of Paris, warned against turning into a  “soft democracy” that could not stand up for its own values. He argued for a ban with punishments for violators. “Sanctions have to be rehabilitated. Not cutting off of heads and hands, of course.  But this is the order of things in a structured society with its own values. It has to be respected. They can’t impose their personal order.”

“Is Islam compatible with laïcité? That’s not my problem.  It’s not for us to decide if it’s compatible, it’s up to them. In the Muslim world, you find all kinds of interpretations. It’s not our role to solve this.”

Understanding the French approach to its Muslim minority has often proved difficult for outsiders. Does this make it any clearer?

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Indonesian artist Agus Suwage knows what it is like to run up against the religious conservatives. Four years ago, he was hauled into parliament, where lawmakers accused him of blasphemy and of producing pornography dressed up as art. Today, facing an even more restrictive climate in Indonesia, Suwage refuses to be silenced and has made those restrictions the focus of his art.

His latest exhibition, which opened at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute this month, highlights what he sees as a growing conservatism in majority Muslim but officially secular Indonesia. Many of the works probably could not be shown at a big public exhibition space in Indonesia following the passage of a controversial anti-pornography law last year.

“There are more important things to address in law than pornography, like education. But everyone wants to win a political point and on this issue the politics come easily,” Suwage told Reuters in an interview.

Suwage’s latest works are a series of prints of female nudes overlaid with the actual text of Indonesia’s 2008 anti-pornography law, under which a person can be charged for any public activity that “incites sexual desire.”

See the full feature here.

(Image: An Agus Suwage print “Behind the curtain” combining the text of Indonesia’s anti-pornography law with a female nude/Agus Suwage collection/Handout)

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Standing behind a wall of pearls and prayer beads in a shop in Mecca, souvenir dealer Mohammad Hamdi says business has never been so bad.  Shops, hotels and tour operators in Islam’s holiest city in western Saudi Arabia are counting the losses as many pilgrims, worried about swine flu, stay at home.

The haj, one of the world’s biggest religious gatherings, is still two months away but there has already been a marked fall in visitors for the minor pilgrimage known as umra, which can be done at any time of the year.

“In previous years people were buying a lot but now only a few come which is hitting sales,” said Hamdi, from Egypt. Hotel occupancy rates during the last ten days of the fasting month of Ramadan, when many perform umra, fell by more than a third to 55 percent compared to last year, said Walid Abu Sabaa, head of the tourism and hotels committee at the Mecca chamber of commerce.

Read the full story here. See also our two factboxes:

FACTBOX-Saudi measures to tackle flu at pilgrimage

FACTBOX: Countries impose restrictions on Mecca pilgrimage

(Photos: At left, Muslims circle the Kabaa at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, 16 Sept 2009. At right, pilgrim to the Grand Mosque carries son wearing mask against swine flu, 15 Sept 2009/Fahad Shadeed)

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Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, locally known as Pandits, fled their ancestral homes in droves 20 years ago after a bloody rebellion broke out against New Delhi’s rule in India's only Muslim-majority state.

Now encouraged by the sharp decline in rebel violence across the Himalayan region, authorities have formally launched plans to help Pandits return home.

Will Pandits, who say they "live in exile in different parts of their own country" return to their homeland in Kashmir where two decades of violence has left nothing untouched and brought misery to the scenic region, its people and its once easy-going society?

Earlier this month, the government constituted a high level committee led by Kashmir's Revenue Minister, Raman Bhalla, which will monitor the return of displaced Hindus and effective implementation of New Delhi's rehabilitation package which includes financial assistance of 750,000 rupees for house  construction.

The initiative is driven by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's package of 16,000 million rupees last year for the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Hindus living as migrants in several parts of the country, mostly in Jammu, the Hindu-dominated winter capital of the state.

Many Hindus who fled Kashmir have sold their homes or lost their kin in the violence that has also killed more than 47, 000 people including Muslim militants and civilians.

Some Pandit groups who have opposed the initiative are demanding a separate, guarded homeland within the Kashmir Valley while others complained that authorities are not meeting their security concerns.

In the largest migration since the 1947 partition of the subcontinent into mainly Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan, nearly 250,000 Kashmiri Pandits left for safer places in India after a bloody insurgency broke out in 1989.

In the past, Pandits have been deterred by a series of attacks by suspected militants. At least 209 Hindus have been also killed since 1989.

Though Kashmiri separatists have made fresh appeals urging Hindus to return to the Valley, they have asked them to live side by side with Muslims rather than in "security zones".

Bhalla says 15,000 families have agreed to return and at least 200 apartments have been contracted so far.

Will Kashmiri Pandits return to their homes in Kashmir, where still almost daily gun battles, between troops and Muslim rebels, and occasional bomb explosions take place?

(PHOTO: A Kashmiri Pandit holds a lighted earthen lamp at a shrine in Khirbhawani, 30 km east of Srinagar May 31, 2009. REUTERS/Danish Ismail)

Photo: Jihad book collection in Jakarta Sept.21, 2009. REUTERS/Supr

A half-century ago, Washington worried about Southeast Asian nations falling like dominoes to an international communist movement backed by Maoist China, and became bogged down in the Vietnam War.

Noordin Top, believed to be the mastermind behind most of the suicide bombings in Indonesia -- including the July 17 attacks on two luxury Jakarta hotels -- pronounced himself to be al Qaeda's franchise in Southeast Asia.

Top and his allies in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) aimed to create an Islamic caliphate across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and Southern Philippines. Even before the 9/11 suicide airliner attacks, they were trying to spark an Islamic revolution with ambitious plots and attacks.

Their young foot soldiers dreamed these pro-Western nations (which had banded together to form ASEAN under the U.S. military umbrella at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967) might fall like dominoes to the righteousness of an Islamic jihad. Their martyrdom to the cause would given them a blissful reward in Heaven.

But just as Communism was not the monolith it was feared to be in the 1960s -- China and the Soviet Union had split for one thing -- so too has the Southeast Asian jihadist movement failed to cohere into a singular movement.

Vietnam, it turned out, was fighting what it believed to be a war of national liberation, and was (still is) historically suspicious of China. Al Qaeda's jihad in Southeast Asia has stumbled over similar misconceptions.

JI's former military commander, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin or "Hambali", tried to pull together various insurgencies in the region under an al Qaeda umbrella before he was captured in Thailand in 2003. He even helped sponsor an "al Qaeda summit" with bin Laden's lieutenants in Kuala Lumpur in 2000.

He failed mostly because the groups had different agendas and a fragmented leadership. The ideology that animates the movements -- Islam -- also prevents it from incorporating as well. The religion does not have hierarchies. People can have different views. The jihadist groups don't do politburos.

Reuters has taken a look at these issues -- including for investors in the region -- in a package of stories. Click on the headlines below to read more about Southeast Asia Islamic insurgencies.

Is economic terrorism a threat to SE Asia?

Eager to attract Middle East investment but uneasy about linking faith and finance, the French parliament has opted for some legislative sleight-of-hand to pass a law allowing the issuance of interest-free Islamic “sukuk” bonds. The move is part of France’s two-year drive to create a new European hub for Islamic finance, whose value globally is estimated at $1 trillion. But instead of introducing a separate bill, which would attract attention to it, the governing UMP party tucked the proposed change of French trust law into a larger bill on financing reform for small and medium-sized companies. And it chose to do this by introducing it as an amendment in the second reading of the bill — the one that usually gets fewer headlines.

(Photo: French National Assembly, 15 Sept 2009/Charles Platiau)

Sounds confusing? That seems to be exactly what the legislators wanted. As my colleague Tamora Vidaillet wrote here in an earlier post entitled “France courts Islamic finance, as long as it’s not too obvious,” bankers, politicians and goverment officials are clearly uneasy about promoting Islamic finance in France. “There is a clear sense of apprehension over how Islamic finance would fit into French society, where the policy of laïcité – the strict separation of church and state — tries to keep anything religious out of the public sphere as much as possible,” she wrote. “Many admit that French companies and banks may hesitate to do anything that uses the label Islamic as this could highlight sensitivities over social and cultural divides.”

The opposition Socialist Party opposed and attacked the change. “We are introducing Islamic law into the French legal framework. This deeply shocks us, it is unacceptable.” said Socialist MP Henri Emmanuelli. “When Muslims are rich, we try to attract them. When they’re poor, we expel them.”

Another Socialist deputy, Jérôme Cahuzac, said: “We don’t create fiduciary regimes for Jews, Catholics or Buddhists. France sends soldiers to Afghanistan to prevent people from dying under sharia law. But when big money is involved, we forget all that … In the second reading, we discovered an amendment we cannot accept. This subject is too delicate to be voted furtively.”

(Photo: Malaysia’s Bank Islam — a brand name considered unthinkable in France, 13 Jan 2009/Bazuki Muhammad)

On the far-right, the anti-immigrant National Front party denounced the law as the latest “communitarian peril” it said threatened the French Republic, along with approvals for construction of mosques, the serving of pork-free school lunches, the introduction of women-only hours at municipal swimming pools and the officially sponsored creation of a Muslim Council.

The idea behind this law is that investors from the Middle East might be more inclined to invest in French projects and companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, now that they can do this in ways that are sharia-compliant.

France’s first sukuk bond, originally expected in October, has been delayed but should be issued later this year or early in 2010, according to Mohammad Farrukh Raza, managing director of Islamic Finance Advisory & Assurance Services (IFAAS). He said the delay was caused by a “a number of challenges from the sharia and legal point of view” but gave no details.

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Recent moves in Indonesia, including plans by one province to stone adulterers to death, have raised concerns about the reputation of the world’s most populous Muslin country as a beacon of moderate Islam.

The provincial assembly in the westernmost province of Aceh — at the epicenter of the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 170,000 people there nearly five years ago — this week decreed the ancient Islamic penalty of stoning to death for adultery.

(Photo: Indonesian Muslim women support sharia, 19 Sept 2006?Supri Supri)

The decision could still be overturned once Aceh’s new parliament is sworn in next month. But many, including Aceh’s governor, the central government in Jakarta, and local businessmen, are concerned about the impact a broadcast public execution by stoning could have on Indonesia’s international reputation.

The Aceh case is one of several showing how hardline Muslim groups are influencing policy in Indonesia. Local governments, given wide latitude to enact laws under Indonesia’s decentralization program, have begun to mandate sharia regulations, including dress codes for women.

One ethnic Chinese Indonesian businessman, a practicing Christian who asked not to be quoted by name, said he feared if the trend continued it could lead to capital flight by the wealthy Chinese, Christian minority. “A lot of regional laws are going in that direction. It’s already alarming the way it’s going. It’s a minority who are doing this, but the problem is that the silent majority just keep silent.”

Read the whole story here.

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News stories about Hindu-Muslim relations in India usually stress strains between followers of the two faiths. Here’s a short Reuters video from our partner ANI on Hindus and Muslims worshipping side by side in a temple and a mazar (mausoleum) in Uttar Pradesh state:

Many of Germany’s 4 million Muslims feel forgotten and ill-inclined to vote in the Sept. 27 general election, and even politicians acknowledge they have woken up too late to their ballot box potential. In Duisburg in the industrial Ruhr region that is home to Germany’s biggest mosque, conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democrat (SPD) challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier stir little interest, still less political passion.

“I haven’t got a job, nor have my mates. Politicians don’t care,” said Ismet Akgul, 19, standing with friends outside an amusement arcade in the Marxloh suburb where about 60 percent of the population has immigrant, in most cases Turkish, roots. “Firms see a foreign name on an application form and chuck it in the bin.”

(Photo: Merkez mosque in Duisburg, 26 Oct 2008/Ina Fassbender)

Of the roughly 2.8 million people in Germany with Turkish roots, only about 600,000 can vote, many failing to register or acquire citizenship. Only five lawmakers out of 614 in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament)  have Turkish origins.

The main parties in Duisburg, which is traditionally an SPD stronghold but has just re-elected its first conservative mayor, are targeting the Turkish community with special campaign events and posters and adverts in Turkish.

“We neglected immigrant voters for too long. But we’ve woken up now and are starting to win them over,” said Thomas Mahlberg, a conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) lawmaker from Duisburg.

Read the whole feature here.

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