Month: October 2006

Politics Central: The Brief Dutch Sharia Eruption
The raw emotions over Islam run very deep in the Netherlands. They show that no matter how excellent the budget surpluses and tax reductions, the Dutch people remain, at the end of the day, deeply fearful over a future nation where Sharia law may indeed start to play a significant role in Dutch life. A few weeks ago, Justice Minister Donner – known for his legalistic approach to most issues – said in an interview that if two-thirds of the Dutch population would support it, the Dutch constitution would have to be amended in order to introduce Sharia law. The immediate broad public outburst over the minister’s remarks was, given their factual and legal basis in the principle of majority rule, surprising.

What is even more interesting is the debate that ensued over the boundaries of voting in free democracies. If a situation could arise where a majority could agree to shred a constitution in favor of religious law – and one from the Middle Ages at that – than doesn’t a democracy have an obligation to devise mechanism whereby such choices could be neutralized?

When the times are relatively good, there usually is little appetite for politicians to wade into these unpredictable waters. It can turn against you, and in the Europe of today it could even kill you. No, it is not the now largely defunct political correctness that is covering up the debate over religion, culture and integration. It is political expediency. The price of which, as always, will have to be paid further down the road.

Welcome to African Echo – The voice of africa
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth. It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).

By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Muslim slave trade could exceed 180 million. Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalized slavery from their statute books.

Russia: Monarchist Nostalgia Remains Powerful – RADIO FREE EUROPE / RADIO LIBERTY
The idea of monarchy is intrinsically tied up with the notion of succession, which makes it of special interest to Russia’s current political elite, for whom that issue is a perpetual problem. Many Putin supporters would relish the idea of an anointed successor rather than have to bother with a presidential election.

There is also an international dimension. Many monarchists believe that reviving the monarchy would bolster Russia’s historical ties with Europe. And reviving the monarchy goes hand in hand with the rejection of the 1917 February and October revolutions in Russia. Because those revolutions paved the way for the independence of the Baltic states, Georgia, and Ukraine, among others, revanchists could use the opportunity to revive territorial claims on parts of the former Russian Empire.

But others worry that the monarchist fervor might not stop at mere territorial issues. One Russian humorist quipped recently that the “new Russians,” surely the aristocrats of their age, “want to restore the monarchy only in order to restore serfdom.”