The Atlantic: It’s Not Enough to Dismiss Islamophobia

And yet, argues Nadia Marzouki in her new book, Islam: An American Religion, anti-Islam arguments in the West have become “surprisingly standardized.” It’s “no longer possible to discuss Islam’s place in Western societies without systematically invoking a series of normative oppositions: good/bad, moderate/radical, faith/law, West/Muslim, modernity/tradition, and so on,” she writes. “For a majority of Americans and Europeans, Islam remains an opaque object that one is unable to think of in any way other than as a problem, threat, or retrograde legal code.”

It’s not enough to understand this simply as Islamophobia, argues Marzouki, who is a research fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She believes Islam has become a cipher in Western societies for the tough questions of secular, liberal democracies: how much to champion liberty over equality, for example, and whether legal rights should entitle Muslims to fully express their faith in public. As much as Europe and the U.S. have different histories and legal traditions, she claims, anti-Muslim groups in both places share their discomfort with these challenges. [...]

One major difference between Europe and the U.S. is that anti-Muslim arguments in the U.S. haven’t been very prominent within the Democratic Party or the left. Maybe you can find a few exceptions here and there, but broadly speaking, it’s mostly people from the right wing of the Republican Party. In Europe, some of the arguments about the fear of Islam, etc., have been endorsed by the right, but also by the left. [...]

What’s at stake is not just a hate of Islam or a hate of Muslims. It’s an unease toward the capacity of abstract language to capture their sense of being disgruntled, or being perceived as losers, or as people who have been hurt or offended. Understanding the role of emotions and affect is important, because it helps us better understand why people consider certain things sacred, like the constitution, or some territory where a mosque should be constructed. Focusing just on law is not enough to address what’s really at stake.

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Al Jazeera: How Germany used Islam during World War I

The plan, a convenient corollary of the German-Ottoman alliance, was formally launched by Turkish Sultan Mehmed V shortly after the start of the war. From a mosque in Constantinople, the Sultan declared Britain, France and Russia the enemies of Islam, calling upon the Muslim subjects of those countries and their colonies to resist their oppressors.

According to the fatwa that was subsequently issued, any Muslim that engaged in war against the Ottomans would have to pay the highest penalty.

In the same year, two prisoner of war camps were built in Wunsdorf and Zossen - 7km away. Wunsdorf's Halbmondlager (Half Moon Camp) - so called because of the high concentration of Muslims - held about 5,000 prisoners at its peak, while Zossen had more than 12,000. [...]

Despite the calculated efforts, only a small proportion of the Muslim prisoners of war ended up fighting for the German side. At least 1,100 people from Tatarstan - now part of Russia - 1,084 Arabs and 49 Indians defected. [...]

Wunsdorf has played a strategic role in many of Germany's key historic moments. Between 1939 and 1945, the Wehrmacht High Command was located nearby and from the end of World War II until 1994, Wunsdorf served as the headquarters of the High Command of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. With 35,000 Soviet troops stationed there, along with their families, the area came to be known as "Little Moscow" by local residents.

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The Conversation: How religion rises – and falls – in modern Australia

In the 2011 Census, Australia became at the same time both less religious and more religious. While a rising number declared they have “no religion” (22%), the number declaring a religion also increased significantly. This was partly due to 17% fewer people taking the option of not responding.

The declaration of “no religion” is becoming particularly evident among young people – the so-called millennials. In the 2011 Census, nearly 30% of Australians between 25 and 34 declared that they had no religion. [...]

Increasing proportions of young people have been raised by parents who declare they have no religion. In the UK, the likelihood of children of religious parents being religious themselves is about 50%. But those raised in non-religious households are very unlikely to take up religion. Similar figures are likely for Australia. [...]

According to the NCLS, 28% of Australians claim to “have had (and another 25% believe it is possible to have) a mystical or supernatural experience about which they have no doubts about its reality”. Given that 11% claim to attend religious services once a week (and 7% once a month), supernatural experiences are not limited to religious organisations.

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Motherboard: Why Bottled Water Is Insane

Bottled water as a concept has been visible for a very long time, of course, and most histories of the phenomenon mark the introduction of Perrier in 1976 as the genesis of modern bottled water. It wasn't until the mid-'90s, however, that bottled water became everyday and, you know, for the common folks. Those of us that remember this period are lucky enough to have witnessed one of the most insane events in consumer history, when the soda industry figured out how to sell the same thing in bottles that people already had piped into their houses. [...]

There is also Nestle, which sits at the cheaper end of the "all natural" bottled water market, and which is helping to illustrate the general insanity of bottled water quite well right now in Colorado. In this case, marketing equals an unceasing stream of semi-trucks driving between a series of wells and a bottling plant in Denver, about three hours away. One truck pulls up, fills, and drives on, to be immediately replaced by another empty truck, and so on. In the process, they are draining an aquifer that feeds the Arkansas River. [...]

Meanwhile, aquifers are drying up, fast; in the U.S., groundwater levels are falling faster than at any other time in the past century. Pollution is hurting the supplies we have. In other places, fights over water can look a lot more brutal than shouting at a town hall. Winning the impeding water wars, which will be between countries but, even more so, against profits, will involve staring down the basic, absurd assumption that water is a thing that we must pay a lot for, and for a lot more than just money.

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Politico: A tale of two Slavic strongmen

The calculating ex-KGB Russian has dismissed his Belarusian counterpart — who was the director of a state pig farm during the Soviet era — as a treacherous buffoon. And he hasn’t forgiven Lukashenko for his refusal to fall in line with other ex-Soviet leaders and recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. (Lukashenko called it a “bad precedent” instead.)

The Belarusian has also turned down Russian requests for an air force base in Belarus and closer military cooperation, and has increasingly tilted to the West to diversify the country’s economy, which has suffered from the economic downturn in sanctions-hit Russia, its main trading partner.

Putin didn’t take well to Lukashenko’s decision to grant visa-free travel to Europeans and Americans. He recently reintroduced border controls between the two nations, even though they’re part of a “Union State,” and cut back on supplies of subsidized gas and oil that power the Belarusian economy — an agreement known as “gas for kisses” — thus jeopardizing the country’s fragile recovery. [...]

Meanwhile, the Belarusian leader’s showdown with Moscow has escalated. In an emotional seven-and-a-half-hour speech during his annual press conference in Minsk in February, Lukashenko claimed the Kremlin had “Belarus by the throat” over concerns that the country “would move closer to the West.” He even threatened to give up cheap Russian gas if necessary. Lukashenko’s message to Putin was clear: I’m no lapdog and I’m willing to risk confrontation to safeguard my independence.

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