French Minister: No Such Thing as Moderate Islam
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
A French minister said there was no such thing as moderate Islam, calling recent election successes by Islamic parties in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia "worrying" in an interview published Saturday.
Jeannette Bougrab, a junior minister with responsibility for youth, told Le Parisien newspaper that legislation based on Islamic sharia law "inevitably" imposed restrictions on rights and freedoms.
Bougrab is of Algerian origin, whose father fought on the French colonial side during Algeria's war of independence, and said she was speaking as "a French woman of Arab origin."
"It's very worrying," she was quoted as saying. "I don't know of any moderate Islam."
"There are no half measures with sharia," she added. "I am a lawyer and you can make all the theological, literal or fundamental interpretations of it that you like but law based on sharia is inevitably a restriction on freedom, especially freedom of conscience."
She was reacting to electoral successes scored by the Ennahda party in Tunisia, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has called for dialogue with such parties as long as they respect certain criteria, including the rule of law and women's rights.
Bougrab conceded that ousted Tunisian and Egyptian rulers Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak had used the Islamist "threat" to win backing from Western countries, but she added, "We shouldn't go to the other extreme."
And she hit out at the 30 percent of Tunisians living in France who had voted for Ennahda in last month's polls. "I am shocked that those who have rights and freedoms here gave their votes to a religious party," she said.
03 December 2011, 16:13
30
So the majority of Sunnis are turning into Sunni crazies! Thank you US.
03 December 2011, 18:58
03
I fully agree with with Bougrab, Islam is what christianity was like some 2 centuries ago. Nowadays, in western countries, religion and politics are seperate; whereas in islamic countries, politics andf religion are inseparable, given islam was spread through conquering wars. Do people have to dress up the way they did some 1500 years ago?
03 December 2011, 18:58
03
I fully agree with with Bougrab, Islam is what christianity was like some 2 centuries ago. Nowadays, in western countries, religion and politics are seperate; whereas in islamic countries, politics andf religion are inseparable, given islam was spread through conquering wars. Do people have to dress up the way they did some 1500 years ago?
03 December 2011, 19:14
05
it seems that the arabs cannot live without a dictatorship ruling them...
are they so brainless? or they have no neurones to think and prefer others to think for them?
03 December 2011, 21:11
00
The issue here is voting for a "religious party" instead of a secular party. This is not an attack against the Islamic religion as the article seems to imply. What she is saying is people should not vote for a religious state, Islam or Christianity. Naharnet articles now sound like the Anti-Islamic articles in America.
04 December 2011, 09:01
00
Completely mistranslated ! Naharnet should use appropriate translaters !
She said " Il n'y a pas d'Islamisme qui soit modéré''. There is a huge difference between ``Islamisme`` and Islam, Islamism means ``radical political islam``, Mrs Bougrab is Muslim herself.
A wikipedia definition in French of Islamisme:
L'islamise est une « idéologie manipulant l'islam en vue d'un projet politique : transformer le système politique et social d'un État en faisant de la charia, dont l'interprétation univoque est imposée à l'ensemble de la société, l'unique source du droit »[4]. L'islamisme est un courant de pensée musulman, essentiellement politique, apparu au XXe siècle.
Islamism is a political ideology of the XX century, not a religion. How Can Naharnet mistranslate like that ???
04 December 2011, 13:01
00
To Eli in Aus
Is Lebanon an islamic country? Politics and Religion are inseparable in Lebanon to the point where government employment is divided according to religions not to a person ability .
04 December 2011, 14:20
00
The Deception, built in Islam, shall be clarified to the West.
The West was made to believe that there are two forms of Muslims: Moderates and Fundamentalists. Untrue.
The West was provided with the content of the Mecca section of he Koran, where peace, tolerance and co-existence are highlighted.
However, the tolerance messages in the Koran have been nullified and abrogated, by Mohammad himself, in later chapters in the Koran labelled the Medina portion in Surat nine 'The Sword'. Whereas the killing of infidels, the lack of compassion and terrorist acts are sanctioned and even encouraged through Jihad.
It seems as if the Islamic world and the West, aka Dar Al Islam and Dar Al Harb, are reading from different books, but in reality it is the same book.
The noted Deception is purposely introduced in the Koran, known to Muslims as Taquia / Conscience Deception, and often used to disguise Islam.
The West must learn Islam's True meaning.
