A leader of the Muslim community in Jersey has praised the work of volunteers for helping people observe Ramadan in the island.

Organisers said they had seen seen rising numbers of islanders come together at the Jersey Islamic Centre to break fast during the holy month.

Ramadan is the most important time in the Islamic calendar where Muslims fast and refrain from eating or drinking between dawn and sunset.

Muslims also believe it is a time for self-reflection and renewing their faith to Allah.

Manik Ahmed Memon, the Iftar co-ordinator at Jersey Islamic Centre, said « a lot of work goes on in the background » to make sure people were able to break fast together.

« It’s great to see different people from different backgrounds coming together, » he said

« We have got great volunteers here who do the heavy lifting and families come together to cook the food which we serve at the centre. »

The centre is able to serve food to between 50 to 75 people coming to break fast every evening.

Amna Salim and Mohammed Attari were both observing Ramadan in Jersey for the first time.

Ms Salim said: « It’s been great.

« I didn’t know everyone would get together like this when I first came to the island.

« Jersey is very different to Pakistan, where I’m from originally, but it makes the move much easier being around people who celebrate your religion and your culture. »

Mr Attari said: « It’s really important for the community to have something like this because we’re a small community so it’s good to be connected. »

Dr Sarfaraz Jamali, the head of Jersey’s Muslim Community, said more than 75 people had gathered on one night for Iftar.

« We started with very few people maybe four or five, » he said.

« It gives a thought about how we’re going to deal with the increasing numbers of people coming here with the space we’ve got. »

By Chris Craddock – BBC News

L’article Ramadan event helping bring community together est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Tensions are rising in France, home to one of Europe’s largest Muslim minorities, ahead of the snap election run-off.

Fatimata, a 22-year-old French Muslim woman, suddenly feels as though many of her compatriots are against her very being.

On Sunday, the far right led the first round of parliamentary elections and while it’s not yet clear if Marine Le Pen’s National Rally movement will form a majority after the July 7 run-off, many of France’s six million Muslims are, like Fatimata, paralysed with fear.

“I am feeling betrayed by France. Knowing that 10.6 million people voted for a party promoting the ban of the veil in the public space is hurtful,” she told Al Jazeera.

She represents the kind of French citizen that Le Pen’s party has long demonised.

She wears the hijab, she was born to foreign parents – Mauritanian and Senegalese, and she was raised in one of the banlieues, the impoverished suburbs circling Paris that are home to many immigrant and ethnic minority communities. She’s also a dual citizen.

Le Pen has called for the hijab to be banned in public spaces while Jordan Bardella, her protege who could become France’s next prime minister, has called the veil a “tool of discrimination”. He has railed against the populous banlieue north of Paris that he grew up in – Seine-Saint-Denis – and promised to ban dual nationals from some “the most strategic” state jobs if his party seizes power.

“I’ve experienced to the core the feeling of becoming a foreigner in one’s own country. I’ve experienced the Islamisation of my neighbourhood,” 28-year-old Bardella said in June.

Fatimata, a student, hails from Stains, a commune within Seine-Saint-Denis. It is possible that as a child, she may have walked past Bardella at a market or sat across from him in a cafe.

“I received French nationality when I was 13, and I can’t help to think that somewhere in my banlieue, there is a 13-year-old girl just like I was who won’t be able to achieve things because the first party in France is now the National Rally,” she said.

‘Compromising my future’

President Emmanuel Macron called the snap polls after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the far right in the recent European Parliament elections. But his risky gamble has backfired.

While National Rally secured about a third of Sunday’s vote with 33.15 percent, the New Popular Front, a left-wing alliance, came second with 28.14 percent. Macron was left red-faced again, as his centrist alliance scored just 20.76 percent. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets since to rally against the far right.

Elias, a 27-year-old who works in marketing, said many Muslims are considering emigrating from France if the National Rally ends up governing – a trend which has already taken hold among some professionals.

Earlier this year, the authors of a study titled La France, tu l’aimes mais tu la quittes (France, loving it but leaving it), conducted a survey of more than 1,000 people, interviewing 140 at length. They cited a “brain drain” of French Muslims quitting the country for jobs abroad because of the “harmful effects of Islamophobia”.

While a “valid” reaction to discrimination or the rise of the far right, Elias said he feels “torn”.

“If we all leave, who will continue to resist? I think it is important to stay, at least for the future generations,” said Elias, who has Algerian ancestry.

“What’s also making me very worried is the potential increase of police violence. There will probably be a surge of racial profiling and of violence, because the officers will feel protected and supported by the National Rally.

“I am scared for my little brother, who is 15 years old and who had his first police check when he was only 13.”

For Tiziri Messaoudene, an 18-year-old student of Algerian descent, it is Bardella’s position on dual nationals that is most frightening.

During a pre-election speech, Bardella justified his stance by evoking Russia’s war on Ukraine, saying, “Can anyone imagine a Franco-Russian working at the armed forces ministry today?”

“The National Rally is saying that dual-nationality holders will not be allowed to work in ‘strategic positions in the state’. This is compromising my future in this country. I am studying political science and would like to work in public affairs, so if this bill passes, would I have studied for nothing?” Tiziri said.

In Carpentras, Tiziri’s hometown in southern France, the National Rally scored 53.51 percent on Sunday.

National Rally was previously known as the National Front, the party founded in 1972 by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The movement has attempted to soften the hard-right image cultivated by Le Pen senior, who was known for, and convicted of, racist hate speech.

Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French legal expert, said it would be “theoretically impossible” for the National Rally to carry out some of its aims.

“The bill on the ban on the veil in the public space would infringe on the laïcité (secularism) principle, while the bill on the dual-nationality holders would infringe on the principle of equality between the citizens,” Alouane told Al Jazeera.

“Nevertheless, the National Rally is a political party like no other, which means that it could do exceptional things if it comes to power.

“So in theory, those bills are against the Constitution. But in practice, we will have to see if the supreme institutions of the country will play their roles as counterweights.”

She believes that a “long process of normalisation” lies behind the far right’s success.

Under Macron’s government, controversial bills such as the abaya ban, the so-called separatism law and recent measures on immigration have rocked marginalised groups.

“It’s an important thing to remember,” said Tiziri. “Even under Macron, we lived in a nauseating Islamophobic and racist climate, where scapegoats were the Muslims and the people from foreign origin.”

According to Benjamin Tainturier, a doctoral student at Sciences Po Paris who researches far-right discourse in the media, the National Rally’s rise can be linked to the “demonisation of the radical left”, especially of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s France Unbowed party, as well as shifting theories on racism.

“After 15 years, the National Rally has succeeded in changing the definition of what racism is, through replacing a colonial and essentialist racism by a more subtle form,” he told Al Jazeera.

Macron’s Renaissance party also “stigmatised its left-wing opponents, by using the same demonising tactics that were used against the far-right before”, he said.

While campaigning, centrist politicians adopted the slogan “Ni RN, ni LFI” (Neither National Rally, nor France Unbowed).

Looking ahead, Tainturier shares Elias’s concern that police-led discrimination could surge if the far right dominates the parliament.

“If the ruling power conveys the idea that it is acceptable to discriminate against people according to their origins, it could legitimise police violence and thus increase it,” he warned.

Meanwhile, Macron, who faces the prospect of awkwardly cohabiting with a far-right premier, is urging voters to get behind the centre, ominously warning of “civil war” if the hard right – or left – triumphs.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

L’article Elections. France’s Muslims fear for their futures as Le Pen’s far right party surges est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank are marking a sombre Eid al-Adha as the Israeli military continues its deadly attacks more than eight months after the start of the war.

In the besieged enclave, where more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed, people gathered in the rubble of their neighbourhoods to pray on Sunday.

The Israeli military says it will hold a daily « tactical pause of military activity » along a road in southern Gaza to enable more humanitarian aid to enter, but emphasised that there is no ceasefire and combat would continue in Rafah.

The pauses, which are said to have begun on Saturday, will last from 08:00 local time (05:00 GMT) until 19:00 local time until further notice.

They will only affect a route that leads northwards from the key Kerem Shalom crossing, which Gaza shares with Israel.

Aid agency ActionAid told the BBC it was getting a « confused » picture over what the pauses mean.

This is while the Israeli military is aggressively attacking western areas of Rafah as it advances with its ground invasion of the southernmost city, and hitting areas across central Gaza.

“Those attacks have pushed people into further internal displacement; in the northern part of the Strip, people are not only struggling to deal with unpredictable falling bombs and attacks on their homes … but also the spread of dehydration and hunger,” said Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

“This is happening on the first day of Eid, where we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian families, many of them in mourning.”

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, also reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Palestinians are trying to cling to a sense of hope.

“Palestinians are trying to do their best, despite Israel’s ongoing aggression, to bring happiness to young children, as many of them will wake up today and celebrate Eid without their parents.”

The Government Media Office in Gaza said in a statement late on Saturday that Israel is preventing the entry of sacrificial animals into the enclave from all crossings, preventing Palestinians from performing sacrificial rituals as part of Eid al-Adha.

The Israeli army on Sunday announced a “local, tactical pause” of military activity along a specific route from 8am until 7pm every day until further notice supposedly to allow more aid into Gaza from the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing.

It did, however, emphasise that its soldiers would continue to fight in the southern part of the enclave and that there would be “no cessation of hostilities”.

World Opinions – Aljazeera – Agencies

L’article Palestinians ‘in mourning’ as Muslims mark Eid al-Adha.. Israel announces military pause on Gaza road to let in aid.. Video est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

Cultural awareness of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan is growing in coastal communities, Muslim families have said.

Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, which this year began on Wednesday 22 March involves fasting during daylight hours.

The fast-breaking evening meals of Iftar in Haverfordwest mosque see Muslims and non-Muslims eat together.

Schools in Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire have been holding assemblies on Ramadan, with advice on how pupils can help their friends who are fasting.

During the month, Muslims fast – which involves abstaining from eating and drinking during daylight hours – as well as focus on self-improvement, self-reflection and giving to the less fortunate.

Sajida Madni, 43, from Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, said cultural awareness of Ramadan had increased in her local community over the last year following the opening of the first mosque in the town last Ramadan.

Mrs Madni said: « In this area there is generally less exposure to other cultures, so there were concerns when we first started up about what we would be doing at the mosque.

« So we invited all of the neighbours for Iftar to show them that we are regular people sharing food and coming together.

« We are part of a wider community, part and parcel of British society, and we should celebrate that. »

The mosque runs a youth club with a range of activities for the community which is attended by Muslim and non-Muslim people alike, and many people bring their friends to share in the evening Iftar meals during the month.

Mustafa Yunis, a trustee at Haverfordwest Central Mosque, said: « A mosque is meant to be a hub, a community centre where everyone is there and it’s brilliant to have representatives from our local community coming to eat together with us.

« We want people to feel that they are part of our community as well. »

Overcoming barriers

Mrs Madni also highlighted the level of support offered by her children’s school.

Mrs Madni’s daughter, Aayah Yunis, and two children who she is a guardian for – Aziza and Mariam Akhtar – are the only Muslims at their secondary school, but she says the school has been incredibly supportive with helping them celebrate the holy month.

Castle School in Pembrokeshire has held an assembly on Ramadan, giving tips to students about how they can help their school friends who are fasting, as well as provided the three children with a prayer room.

The assembly also helped break down barriers and open up conversations about the Muslim faith.

« So many of her friends were able to ask her questions after that assembly that they felt they couldn’t ask beforehand, » Mrs Madni said.

Describing the impact on her, Aayah said: ‘It’s really nice to teach people about it because it helps people learn new things and helps me express my Islamic identity. »

Castle School said that programmes that allowed pupils to interact with different cultures was « further enriching their learning experiences and broadening their horizons ».

‘A positive shift’

Sara Ahmed, 40, from Ceredigion said she had noticed a « positive shift » in her children’s school’s approach to Ramadan, which also proactively held an assembly on the tradition.

« Prior to this year I’ve usually had to call into school and explain that the kids will be fasting, and that they will not be having food or water during the day and that they may need breaks during PE. The school has always been fine and positive about this.

« It wasn’t anything that parents spurred on either – this was the first time in my experience that that has happened and I really appreciated that, » she said.

She said one of her son’s friends even contacted him and said she wanted to try and fast a day with him.

« In the kids’ school, there’s probably less than 10 Muslim pupils. But compared to other schools in the area that’s quite a high number, » she said.

« There aren’t that many Muslims in the community here and you can sometimes feel you stick out a bit. So it’s really great to see people taking an interest and embrace our culture. »

By Sanjana Idnani – BBC News

L’article Ramadan: Coastal communities help Muslims celebrate est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.