Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza have been “deliberately disproportionate” and amount to “collective punishment”, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said on 17 July, in unusually robust criticism of a close British ally. Clegg made his comments on the tenth day of fighting between Israel and Hamas. “I really do think now the Israeli response appears to be deliberately disproportionate, it is amounting now to a disproportionate form of collective punishment,” Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the country’s coalition, told Britain’s LBC radio station. Gaza health officials say at least 341 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the fighting.
GENEVA: PROTESTERS SLAM UN SILENCE ON PALESTINE
Hundreds of protesters have demonstrated in front the UN headquarters in Geneva in protest against Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip. About 500 people from different religions took part in the protest in the Swiss capital on 19 July, as Israeli forces continued their offensive which has killed at least 341 Palestinians and injured at least 2,560, according to Palestinian health officials.
Some protesters carried banners reading: “You do not need to be a Muslim to stand up for Gaza, you just need to be human.” Others held candles ablaze, leaving the hot wax to drip down their hands to signify the fire and bloodshed erupting across Gaza. Zerka Sahnoune, a member of Right For All, one of the organising groups for the protest, said: “We condemn the reaction of international community and above all the reaction of the United Nations. “UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has not done anything and has not taken any measures to stop this tragedy.”
ISRAEL SURPASSES HITLER WITH GAZA ATROCITIES: ERDOGAN
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has fiercely criticised Israel’s offensive in Gaza, comparing it to atrocities carried out by Adolf Hitler during World War II. Speaking at a rally in the Black Sea city of Ordu on 19 July, Erdogan cursed what he said was a racist Israeli mentality that was killing innocent infants and children in Gaza and expanding its brutalities into the West Bank.
Erdogan said: “(Israelis) have no conscience, no honour, no pride. Israelis curse and swear about Hitler day and night for the Holocaust, but now the terrorist state of Israel has surpassed Hitler with its atrocities in Gaza.”
MAJORITY OF MUSLIM AMERICAN GROUPS BOYCOTT WHITE HOUSE RAMADHAN DINNER
On 14 July, some American Muslims and officials from certain Islamic states did attend the Ramadhan dinner at White House, but many American Muslims refused to participate in the event amid growing concern that US policies keep getting worse and they would be complicit if they attended the dinner. A large number of Muslims instead participated in a protest outside the White House against US government policies, according to reports published in US media.
According to Firedoglake, over a hundred Muslim advocates, activists, and scholars signed an open letter explaining why they believed a boycott was necessary. They said the dinner “represents nothing more than an attempt to whitewash state violence, absolve government institutions from taking responsibility and creating mechanisms of accountability and transparency for the civil rights violations that have been perpetrated towards Muslims and Muslim Americans, and Americans at large, beginning from even before the onset of the War on Terror.”
HISTORIC LIBRARY IN SARAJEVO REOPENED
The National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is referred to as the ‘Memory of Srajevo’, has reopened its doors to visitors for the first time since it was destroyed by Serb forces in 1992 during the Bosnian war. The library, also known as the Vijecnica national library, will continue to hold Open Days up till July 31 everyday between 10.00-17.00 local time.
The library was once home to over six million books and archives, as well as works from Bosniak, Serb, Croat and Jewish writers and artists. In the fire which burned for three days as of August 25, 1992, which ultimately destroyed the building, over 155,000 handwritten works and almost two million books from the national archives vanished. Restoration was finally complete after 18 years on May 9, 2014.
MUSLIMS FLOCK TO SEE GIANT WOODEN QUR’ĀN IN INDONESIA
Thousands of visitors have been rushing to Indonesia to see the largest Qur’ān carved out on wood in Palembang, South Sumatra. Starting work on the giant wooden Qur’ān in 2002, a team of writers, carvers, carpenters and painters led by Ihsaniyah Islamic boarding school caretaker Syofwatillah Mohzaib began carving timber from the Tembesu tree, which is known to be termite-proof and durable.
Seven years and US$170,976 later, the project, named Al-Quran Al-Akbar (The Biggest Qur’ān) features 15 chapters of the Qur’ān carved on both sides of 315 revolving timber panels measuring 177cm x 140 cm. The structure, which is 5-storey high, will get even bigger as chapters 16 to 30 are currently being carved. Syofwatillah also hoped to build a special 11-storey building to house the wooden Qur’ān, which is currently in his boarding school.
PHOTOGRAPHER HIGHLIGHTS PLIGHT OF ITALIAN MUSLIMS
An Italian award-winning photographer, Nicolo Degiorgis, has demonstrated the contrast of the peace of prayer with the tension of politics in his new book, Hidden Islam, which focuses on how Muslims pray in Italy. The photographer highlights the problem Italian Muslims face in finding a suitable place for worship, leaving them with no choice but to pray in garages, gyms and shops. “In Italy the right to worship, without discrimination, is enshrined within the constitution. There are 1.35 million Muslims in Italy and yet, officially, only eight mosques in the whole country,” Martin Parr wrote in introduction to Nicolo Degiorgis’s book, which received an award at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival.
ISLAMIC MARRIAGES TO BE OFFICIALLY RECOGNISED IN SOUTH AFRICA
The South African government has taken a historic step and provided the Islamic marriage opportunity to the country’s Muslim population, most of which came from Malia islands and have faced enormous difficulties for nearly 300 years. A hundred Imams were assigned in Cape Town to solemnise Islamic marriage, reports said on 11 July.
Imams go on negotiations with the government to renew former unrecognised marriages to official ones. Muslims’ marriage ceremonies in Cape Town organised in mosques or wedding ceremony halls. The crucial part is vocally expressing approval of the marriage by both sides. Imam confirms the marriage and the Qur’ān is read aloud.
FAR-RIGHT GROUP ‘INVADES’ MOSQUE IN LONDON
Britain First, a far-right group in the UK which on a number of occasions have ‘invaded’ mosques around the country, charged into a mosque in south-east London, where they gave the imam a seven-day warning to remove signs regarding gender segregation. The group’s so-called “Kent battalion activists” stormed into the mosque’s prayer hall with their shoes on, refusing requests from an elderly man to show respect to the place of worship, reports said on 16 July.
The group led by Paul Golding, a former British Nationalist Party councillor, and hardline evangelical Jim Dowson, who was once in charge of the party’s finances, have in the past admitted to pursuing a “holy war” on the streets of Britain on Channel Four News.