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ORGANIZATION OF ISLAMIC CORPORATION
TOPIC: Muslim Dominance in Europe
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Introduction
There is sufficient proof that the Muslim empire has
been spreading throughout the world. Currently, the
Muslim religion is reaching nearly 1.5 billion
followers. However, some non-Muslim have
accused Muslim of exaggerating their number of
followers of the Muslim religion in order to obtain
more political clout. On the other side, Muslims
accused the non-Muslims of releasing false and low
statistics of followers in order to “marginalize”
Islam. The majority of the political scientists claim that the reason for this spread is
not due to current quantity of political leaders, but because of the missionaries and
spiritual leaders. The main counter-argument used to oppose this theory is in
Indonesia and Malaysia, where there is no official register of the any Muslim army
settling in one of these nations and still have a dense Islamic population. Specialists
believe that there are other theories to explain the acceptance and spread of Muslin in
the Far West region, such as the value that the Islam gives to the common people
rather than the elites.
Statistics of the Muslim Growth in Europe
In 2009, only 7 percent of Europe (49 million people) and 3 percent of the world’s
Muslim population lived in Europe. A part of the Muslim population is only
considered residents and not considered a citizen. Due to that there is no political
impact but it helps to build, maintain and establish religious facilities and activities.
Europe can me considered the third continent to
Islam enter, since it came after Asia and Africa. In
order to a culture maintain it is population for at
least 25 years, they need to have a fertility rate of
at least 2.11 children for each family, if it is less
the rate will obviously decline. The fertility rate
of the European nations as a whole is of 1.38, but
the population is not declining due to the
immigration of the Islamic immigration. Out of all
immigrants to nations members of the European
Union, ninety percent follow the Islamic religion.
In France for example, the fertility rate is of 1.8
children for family and in family that follows the
Muslim religion in Europe the fertility rate is of
8.1. In 2009, the CIA released information stating
that thirty percent of the children of twenty years
old or younger follow the Islamic religion and in
larger cities, such as Paris and Nice, it is about
forty-five percent. Some political scientists
predict that by 2027, 1 out of 5 Frenchmen will be
Muslim and in about 39 years France will be an Islamic republic. The German
government stated, "The fall in the (German) population can no longer be stopped. Its
downward spiral is not longer reversible… it will be a Muslim state by the year of
2050”.
“Western” Media Influence
The American and European media are constantly biased about
their opinion of their general enemies, Islam. Even with that,
there is a growth and spread of Islam in the West. There is
indeed a negative portrayal of the Islam in media is defiantly
causing issues. There is a responsibility of the international
community, including the governments, to ensure respect for
all regions and combats of the defamation of Islam. The has
been an attempt and it is one of the goals of the OIC to have a
United Nations adopt a international resolution to counter
“Islamophobia.” There is a need, based on the Muslim world
idea, to indorse laws to counter it, including deterrent
punishments. In Western Asia, after the Prophet Muhammad
died there as a threat of the extinction of the Christianity at the region.
Declaration of Human Rights
The distinct basis of both religions, Christianity and Muslin, divide Europe causing
misunderstanding between Islam and the Western Nations. Every nation in Europe
claims to guarantee “The right to freedom of religion as guaranteed under the
Convention excludes any discretion on the part of the State to determine whether
religious beliefs or the means used to express such beliefs are legitimate”. In the mid
1990’s, for example, a law in France banned preaching by persons of any faith. The
freedom of religion is not only states by the European nations, but is in the
Declaration of Human Rights in Article 2 states that Everyone is entitled to all the
rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such
as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social
origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on
the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or
territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-selfgoverning or under any other limitation of sovereignty”
Emerging Issues of the Muslim Dominance
The rapid and intense growth of the Muslim dominance in Europe brought
consequences and issues from education to freedom of religion. OIC believes strongly
that the way to improve inter-religious understanding is through existing avenues of
education around the world, and to this end, it has made the diversification of
religious education a high priority area. Education, especially religious education, has
the power to open new opportunities of trust and understanding the relationship of
individuals with their religion and also the dissimilarities in between the faiths.
Racism, intolerance and hatred can be potentially generated due to this education. It is
clear that religious education needs to be both analyzed and reformed in the context of
rapidly shifting geopolitics. It is part of the issue of religious education that these
schools that follow religious education system annuls the modernization and science.
The political implications of religious education should also be taken into
consideration, the control exercised by states over the forms of education. Both in the
Islamic world and in the West, state influence over religious education has been
difficult to navigate. Understanding the history of religious education in Islam and
other world traditions will be the first step towards determining how best to
accomplish this goal of inter-religious understanding in the context of education. The
large and intense immigration of Muslim communities to Europe bring on conflicts of
multiculturalism and of nationalism. Western Europe
deals with this immigration that has unique challenges
for the government and to the population of these
nations, adapting to these secular traditions. The
Muslim practice of wearing the hijab, the veil,
generated polemic in between these nations in
society. It is consider it plays a role in the education,
since other sees the girls that wear the hijab as
disruptive, and international security, since the hijab
is associated with violence of Islam. The is a lack of
awareness and understanding of the Islamic context of
veiling in these nations in Western Europe due to
stereotypes that leads to discrimination. The Minister of Education in France at the
time went so far as to order all Muslim women wearing the Hijab to expelled from
schools, however no action has ever been taken against Catholics wearing a cross,
Sikhs wearing a turban or Jewish males wearing a Yarmulka. The law was considered
by the Muslim community not only discriminatory but as a violation of the religious
freedom.
KEY TERMS
Fertility rate: a population is the average number of children that would be born to a
woman over her lifetime if she were to experience the exact current age-specific
fertility rates (ASFRs) through her lifetime, and she were to survive from birth
through the end of her reproductive life.
Hijab: a veil that covers the hair and neck worn by Muslim women particularly in the
presence of non-related adult males. According to Islamic scholarship, it is given the
wider meaning of modesty, privacy, and morality. The Qur'an mentions the use of
covering and veiling and that it is metaphysical, where al-hijab refers to "the veil,
which separates man or the world from God.
Stereotypes: a belief that may be adopted about specific types of individuals or
certain ways of doing things, but that belief may or may not accurately reflect reality
Religious education: referring to teaching about and based on religions in general and
its varied aspects, its beliefs, doctrines, rituals, customs, rites, and personal roles.
Inter-religious: refers to cooperative, constructive and positive interaction between
people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both
the individual and institutional levels. It is distinct from syncretism or alternative
religion, in that dialogue often involves promoting understanding between different
religions to increase acceptance of others, rather than to synthesize new beliefs.
GUIDING QUESTIONS
1. How can OIC work with other bodies of the United Nations to address both
the current veiling controversy and the larger issues from which it emerges?
2. How can religious education programs prevent the spread of extremism in all
parts of the world?
3. How should the OIC interpret the veil in the context of gender rights?
4. How will the OIC incorporate the diverse experiences of its member’s
countries into the development of a religious education platform?
5. What policy recommendations should OIC make regarding integration and
assimilation in Western Europe?
6. What practical changes should be recommended for religious education
regulation and programming in all the countries of the world?
7. What programs could the OIC put into place that would directly or indirectly
address the issue of veiling in Western Europe and across the world?
8. What specific concerns of the misunderstandings between the Islamic world
and the West should complicate these policies?
9. What specific policy recommendations should be made for Western European
countries concerning the veil controversy? What precedent should be set for
future actions by countries with a Muslim minority?
10. What theoretical framework should underlie the OIC’s perspectives on
religious education?
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FURTHER RESOURCES
The Plan For Muslim Dominance in Europe
(http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=7166)
Why Islam Spread So Fast And It Is Spreading Even Faster Now
(http://www.scribd.com/doc/3001582/WHY-ISLAM-SPREAD-SO-FASTAND-SPREADING-FASTER-EVEN-NOW)
Evaluating Islam Is A Male Dominant Religion (http://www.understandingislam.com/q-and-a/social-issues/evaluating-islam-is-islam-a-male-dominantreligion-5057)
Peace with Islam (http://www.oic-oci.org/page_detail.asp?p_id=228)
Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5994047/MuslimEurope-the-demographic-time-bomb-transforming-our-continent.html)
Islamic Europe http://www.tomorrowsworld.org/magazines/2006/may-jun/anislamic-europe