[Kabar-indonesia] IHT: Christian Charities' Uneasy Role in the Muslim World [+NYT]

[Joyo at aol.com]

also: NYT: Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center 
[Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its 
Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are 
arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.]

International Herald Tribune
October 12, 2006

Christian Charities' Uneasy Role in the Muslim World  

By Susan Milligan 
The Boston Globe

SAHIWAL, Pakistan The X-ray machine at the Christian Hospital here is 
emblazoned with a U.S. Agency for International Development sticker to promote its 
donation of top-of-the- line medical equipment. So is the blood bank 
refrigerator, the auditorium for medical lectures and the radiology computer - all 
sparkling new messages of help for the people of Pakistan, a crucial ally in the war 
on terrorism.
 
With a cleanliness and order that are in stark contrast to the crowded and 
filthy municipal hospital across town, the Christian Hospital, run by the 
Christian group World Witness with U.S. government assistance, seems an easy choice 
for the nearly all-Muslim community it offers to serve. The public hospital is 
understaffed and under-equipped, with patients slumped in dirty hallways and 
anxious parents holding crying, sickly babies awaiting a doctor's attention.
 
But like many Christian facilities in this Muslim nation, the Christian 
Hospital is an entity apart. It cares for 14,000 to 15,000 patients a year, 
compared with one million at the municipal hospital, and the neediest patients say 
they cannot afford the few dollars for admission and blood tests.
 
Only a dozen or so patients sat in the waiting room during a recent visit, 
their traditional Muslim dress looking out of place in a facility with tile 
crosses in the walls and a chapel in the courtyard.
 
A rifle-carrying guard patrols the entrance - a grim sign of the danger 
Christian groups face in a nation where some citizens believe their Muslim faith is 
under attack by the largely Christian West.
 
Christian groups are providing health care, education and disaster relief in 
many Muslim nations, and the U.S. Agency for International Development has 
awarded about $53 million from 2001 to 2005 to fund projects by Christians in 
Pakistan, Indonesia and Afghanistan. Both the aid organizations and the U.S. 
government hope the projects will sow good will in a region growing increasingly 
wary of the West.
 
But the war in Iraq and the detention of Muslims at Guantánamo Bay have 
greatly angered some residents, who are finding it hard to separate the policies 
they vehemently oppose from the activities of Christian aid groups, local 
Islamic leaders said.
 
"People hate America as a whole. People in general think the West, and Bush 
especially, have a double standard for Muslims. They are killing Muslims," said 
Ameer-Ul-Azim, secretary of the Jama'at-e-Islami party in Lahore. "It can 
come to the point where it can affect the relationship between the Muslim 
community and the Christian community."
 
While Christian Hospital officials insist they are there to heal, not to 
proselytize, World Witness's own literature suggests part of its mission is to 
spread Christianity. A brochure for the hospital says The Jesus Film is shown to 
all patients and that "the hospital and staff feel that through Christ, 
terrorism will be eliminated in this part of the world," a phrase that offended 
Muslim leaders who say Islam is about peace, not violence.
 
"If I am given such a message, I ask, 'Why are you spreading hatred among 
human beings? What is your agenda?'" said Abdul Rauf Farooqi, a Lahore- based 
member of the board of the National Religious Schools Council.
 
Christian groups say that view is mistaken. Reverend Frank van Dalen, World 
Witness's executive director, said The Jesus Film was only shown in the waiting 
room and not constantly. He winced when he was shown the brochure's reference 
to eliminating terrorism through Christ.
 
"That's a dumb thing to say. It doesn't work that way," he said.
 
Still, critics say, the Bush administration's special efforts to reach out to 
faith-based providers, the vast majority of whom are Christian, may raise 
suspicions in Muslim countries.
 
"I think it's important to step back and look at the wisdom of putting faith- 
based components into a program like this that is operating in a Muslim 
nation. The last thing we want to do is create the impression in the Muslim world 
that the U.S. government is funding groups that seek to convert Muslims to 
Christianity," said Rob Boston, spokesman for Americans United for the Separation 
of Church and State. "When USAID gives money to religious groups that put 
Christian symbols in their facilities, and leave evangelical tracts lying around, 
it's hard to draw any other conclusion that it looks like proselytizing."
 
Defenders of the Christian groups say religion should not come into play. "As 
long as it effectively delivers the good the government offers - such as 
medicine - the organization should not be discriminated against simply because it 
is motivated by faith," said Ryan Messmore, a religion specialist with the 
Heritage Foundation.
 
But far from discriminating, the U.S. Agency for International Development 
has become a growing source of funds for Christian groups in the Muslim world. 
The agency spent $57 million from 2001 to 2005 (out of a total of $390 million 
to nongovernmental agencies) to fund almost a dozen projects run by 
faith-based organizations in Pakistan, Indonesia and Afghanistan, according to records 
obtained by the Freedom of Information Act. Only 5 percent of that sum went to 
a Muslim group, the Aga Khan Foundation of the USA, which was given 
approximately $3.5 million for projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
 
And even that amount is well below what the Aga Khan Foundation received 
under the Clinton administration, including $4.9 million in fiscal 2000 alone.
 
In the wake of the devastating 2004 tsunami, no Muslim organization has been 
given a prime award from the U.S. Agency for International Development for 
relief work in Indonesia - a sore spot among Muslim groups that want to help 
there.
 
In fact, of the nearly 160 faith-based organizations that have received prime 
contracts from the agency in the past five years, only two are Muslim.
 
Mark Ward, the agency's senior deputy assistant administrator for Asia/Near 
East, speculated that Muslim groups may be disadvantaged because larger, more 
established groups have mastered the grant application process.
 
"We like the diversity it shows in a program if we have a group that is tied 
to Islam," Ward said, adding that Islamic groups are encouraged to apply.
 
Bush's faith-based initiative is geared to help faith-based groups navigate 
the application process. But it has worked mostly for Christian groups, whose 
share of the agency's funding has roughly doubled under Bush and accounts for 
98.3 percent of all money to faith-based groups.
 
The Pakistani government says it has no problems with Christian aid groups, 
as long as they do not break laws against blasphemy. But the tension between 
what is perceived as the largely Christian West and the Muslim East is evident.
 
"I have never had a problem with any Christian organizations. Charity work 
has no religion," said Tasmin Aslam, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. 
"It's certainly not like Muslim organizations in the West, who are seeing that 
they are perceived that if they are collecting money they must be doing it for 
terrorist purposes."
 
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The New York Times
October 11, 2006 

Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center 

By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER

BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 -- Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line 
regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing 
that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values. 

“You saw what happened with the pope,” said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of 
Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. “He said 
Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and 
make his point.

“Rationality is gone.” 

Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week 
in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party 
with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby. 

His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the 
name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed 
that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of 
violence. 

For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now 
those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are 
asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism 
should have limits. 

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, a prominent Labor politician, 
seemed to sum up the moment when he wrote last week that he felt 
uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil. The veil, he wrote, 
is a “visible statement of separation and difference.”

When Pope Benedict XVI made the speech last month that included a quotation 
calling aspects of Islam “evil and inhuman,” it seemed to unleash such 
feelings. Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims 
applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth. 

The line between open criticism of another group or religion and bigotry can 
be a thin one, and many Muslims worry that it is being crossed more and more. 

Whatever the motivations, “the reality is that views on both sides are 
becoming more extreme,” said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert 
to Islam. “It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is 
making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.” Mr. Pedersen 
fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should 
integrate into Europe.

The worries about extremism are real. The Belgian far-right party, Vlaams 
Belang, took 20.5 percent of the vote in city elections last Sunday, five 
percentage points higher than in 2000. In Antwerp, its base, though, its performance 
improved barely, suggesting to some experts that its power might be peaking.

In Austria this month, right-wing parties also polled well, on a campaign 
promise that had rarely been made openly: that Austria should start to deport its 
immigrants. Vlaams Belang, too, has suggested “repatriation” for immigrants 
who do not made greater efforts to integrate.

The idea is unthinkable to mainstream leaders, but many Muslims still fear 
that the day — or at least a debate on the topic — may be a terror attack away.

“I think the time will come,” said Amir Shafe, 34, a Pakistani who earns a 
good living selling clothes at a market in Antwerp. He deplores terrorism and 
said he himself did not sense hostility in Belgium. But he said, “We are now 
thinking of going back to our country, before that time comes.” 

Many experts note that there is a deep and troubled history between Islam and 
Europe, with the Crusaders and the Ottoman Empire jostling each other for 
centuries and bloodily defining the boundaries of Christianity and Islam. A sense 
of guilt over Europe’s colonial past and then World War II, when intolerance 
exploded into mass murder, allowed a large migration to occur without any 
uncomfortable debates over the real differences between migrant and host. 

Then the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted Europe into new awareness 
and worry. 

The subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, and the murder of the Dutch 
filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Moroccan stand as examples of the 
extreme. But many Europeans — even those who generally support immigration — have 
begun talking more bluntly about cultural differences, specifically about 
Muslims’ deep religious beliefs and social values, which are far more conservative 
than those of most Europeans on issues like women’s rights and homosexuality. 

“A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists 
or the extreme right — are saying, ‘Now we have this religion, it plays a role 
and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60’s and 
70’s,’ ” said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the 
Green Left Party, who is active on Muslim issues. 

“So there is this fear,” he said, “that we are being transported back in a 
time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is equality 
between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now there is the 
idea we have to do it again.” 

Now Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with 
increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.

Austrians in their recent election complained about public schools in Vienna 
being nearly full with Muslim students and blamed the successive governments 
that allowed it to happen.

Some Dutch Muslims have expressed support for insurgents in Iraq over Dutch 
peacekeepers there, on the theory that their prime loyalty is to a Muslim 
country under invasion.

So strong is the fear that Dutch values of tolerance are under siege that the 
government last winter introduced a primer on those values for prospective 
newcomers to Dutch life: a DVD briefly showing topless women and two men 
kissing. The film does not explicitly mention Muslims, but its target audience is as 
clear as its message: embrace our culture or leave. 

Perhaps most wrenching has been the issue of free speech and expression, and 
the growing fear that any criticism of Islam could provoke violence.

In France last month, a high school teacher went into hiding after receiving 
death threats for writing an article calling the Prophet Muhammad “a merciless 
warlord, a looter, a mass murderer of Jews and a polygamist.” In Germany a 
Mozart opera with a scene of Muhammad’s severed head was canceled because of 
security fears. 

With each incident, mainstream leaders are speaking more plainly. 
“Self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the 
name of Islam,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in criticizing the 
opera’s cancellation. “It makes no sense to retreat.” 

The backlash is revealing itself in other ways. Last month the British home 
secretary, John Reid, called on Muslim parents to keep a close watch on their 
children. “There’s no nice way of saying this,” he told a Muslim group in East 
London. “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, 
including your children, for suicide bombing, grooming them to kill themselves to 
murder others.” 

Many Muslims say this new mood is suddenly imposing expectations that never 
existed before that Muslims be exactly like their European hosts.

Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born activist here in Belgium, said that for 
years Europeans had emphasized “citizenship and human rights,” the notion that 
Muslim immigrants had the responsibility to obey the law but could otherwise 
live with their traditions. 

“Then someone comes and says it’s different than that,” said Mr. Jahjah, who 
opposes assimilation. “You have to dump your culture and religion. It’s a 
different deal now.”

Lianne Duinberke, 34, who works at a market in the racially mixed northern 
section of Antwerp, said: “Before I was very eager to tell people I was married 
to a Muslim. Now I hesitate.” She has been with her husband, a Tunisian, for 
12 years, and they have three children. 

Many Europeans, she said, have not been accepting of Muslims, especially 
since 9/11. On the other hand, she said, Muslims truly are different culturally: 
No amount of explanation about free speech could convince her husband that the 
publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was in any 
way justified. 

When asked if she was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Muslim 
immigration in Europe , she found it hard to answer. She finally gave a defeated 
smile. “I am trying to be optimistic,” she said. “But if you see the global 
problems before the people, then you really can’t be.” 

Dan Bilefsky reported from Brussels, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Contributing 
were Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell from London, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, 
Peter Kiefer from Rome, Renwick McLean from Madrid and Maia de la Baume from Paris.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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