 BY CHARLES KURZMAN, IJLAL NAQVI Do Muslims automatically vote Islamic? That's the concern conjured up by strongmen from Tunis to Tashkent, and plenty of Western experts agree. They point to the political victories of Islamic parties in Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey in recent years and warn that more elections across the Islamic world could turn power over to anti-democratic fundamentalists. But these victories turn out to be exceptions, not the political rule. When we examined results from parliamentary elections in all Muslim societies, we found a very different pattern: Given the choice, voters tend to go with secular parties, not religious ones.
Over the past 40 years, 86 parliamentary elections in 20 countries have included one or more Islamic parties, according to annual reports from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Voters in these places have overwhelmingly turned up their noses at such parties. Eighty percent of these Islamic parties earned less than 20 percent of the vote, and a majority got less than 10 percent -- hardly landslide victories. The same is true even over the last few years, with numbers barely changing since 2001. True, Islamic parties have won a few well-publicized breakthrough victories, such as in Algeria in 1991 and Palestine in 2006.
But far more often, Islamic parties tend to do very poorly. What's more, the more free and fair an election is, the worse the Islamic parties do. By our calculations, the average percentage of seats won by Islamic parties in relatively free elections is 10 points lower than in less free ones. Even if they don't win, Islamic parties often find themselves liberalized by the electoral process. We found that Islamic party platforms are less likely to focus on sharia law or armed jihad in freer elections and more likely to uphold democracy and women's rights.
And even in more authoritarian countries, Islamic party platforms have shifted over the course of multiple elections toward more liberal positions: Morocco's Justice and Development Party and Jordan's Islamic Action Front both stripped sharia law from their platforms over the last several years. These are still culturally conservative parties, by any standard, but their decision to run for office places them at odds with Islamic revolutionaries. In many cases, they're actually risking their lives. Almost two decades ago, even before his alliance with Osama bin Laden, Egyptian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote a tract condemning the Muslim Brotherhood's abandonment of revolutionary methods in favor of electoral politics.
"Whoever labels himself as a Muslim democrat, or a Muslim who calls for democracy, is like saying he is a Jewish Muslim or a Christian Muslim," he wrote. In Iraq, Sunni Islamic revolutionaries recently renewed their campaign "to start killing all those participating in the political process," according to a warning received by a Sunni politician who was subsequently assassinated in Mosul. More at Foreign Policy
 by Paul BelienIn a recent referendum, a majority of the Swiss approved a ban on the construction of new minarets in their country.
Now activist European European judges may tell Switzerland to lift the ban. The Swiss, however, might not be impressed. On November 29, a 57.5% majority of the Swiss voters, approved a ban on the construction of new minarets in their country. The four existing minarets are allowed to remain, and the building of new mosques - Switzerland already has some 200 mosques - is also permitted, but the Swiss electorate does not want any new minarets towering over Swiss cities and villages. The referendum result was not the answer the Swiss federal government in Bern wanted. The government had actively campaigned for a “No” in the Ban-the-Minaret referendum. Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey said she was “shocked and disappointed” by the outcome. Turnout for the referendum was unusually high, with 53% of the electorate casting a vote and an overwhelming majority of 22 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons supporting the ban.
If Switzerland were part of the European Union (EU), the Swiss would no doubt be made to vote again until they give the answer their government wants. That is what some self-declared “democrats” are, indeed, proposing. - “The Swiss will have to vote again,” Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the leader of the Green group in the EU Parliament told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps. - “But the Swiss people have spoken…,” Le Temps objected. - “So what?”
 Swiss nationals are voting on whether to ban the building of minarets on the country's mosques.Opinion polls before Sunday's refendum, back by the country largest political party - the right-wing Swiss People's Party - indicated that it would be defeated, but only by a small margin. About 400,000 Muslims live in Switzerland - whose population is just under eight million. Most Muslim citizens are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and Turkey. Although Islam is the country's second largest religion after Christianity, there are only four mosques with minarets in the whole country. Supporters of the proposed ban say minarets represent the growth of an alien ideology and legal system that have no place in the Swiss democracy.
"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure - we don't have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it," Ulrich Schlueer, Co-President of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets, said. "Therefore, there's no room for minarets in Switzerland."
But Switzerland's Muslims have said that the referendum is fuelling anti-Islamic feeling in the country.
"The initiators have achieved something everyone wanted to prevent, and that is to influence and change the relations to Muslims and their social integration in a negative way, Taner Hatipoglu, the president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Zurich, said.
"We are frightened, and if the atmosphere continues to be like this and if the anti-Islamic hate increases, then the Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore. This of course is very unpleasant."
Posters have appeared in many Swiss cities showing a dark, almost menacing figure of a woman, shrouded from head to foot in a black burka. Behind her is the Swiss flag, shaped like a map of the country, with black minarets shooting up out of it like missiles.
The cities of Basel, Lausanne and Fribourg banned the billboards, saying they painted a "racist, disrespectful and dangerous image" of Islam. The United Nations Human Rights Committee called the posters discriminatory and said Switzerland would violate international law if it bans minarets. There is also an online game, which has proved very popular, in which players can shoot down minarets as they rise up on the skylines of Switzerland's major cities.
Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from Bern, said that there was a political message behind Sunday's referendum. "The reality is, as was described to me by a Swiss resident who is not a Swiss citizen, this is the right-wing Swiss People's Party sending out a message to Muslims: 'Know your place in Switzerland'," he said. "They believe, the right-wing People's Party, that if the Muslims get their mosques and their minarets it will follow on that they will want, perhaps, separate schooling and there could be a campiaign to turn Switzerland, of all places, into a place that practices Sharia." Earlier in November, Muslim prayer rooms across Switzerland opened their doors to the public, in the hope of reassuring voters that they had nothing to fear from minarets.
The Swiss government and business leaders have opposed a minaret ban, saying it would be harmful to the country's image abroad and disastrous for the Swiss economy.
The Swiss People's Party forced the referendum after collecting 100,000 signatures within 18 months from eligible voters supporting the motion. Al Jazeera 
 Iran is bribing friendly countries to Israel to abandon it and vote against the Jewish state in the UN, a report obtained by the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem reported.
According to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the report said the Iranian foreign minister met with the foreign minister of the Oceania nation Solomon Islands last year and promised him a check in the amount of $200,000, along with technological aid.
These incentives were meant to come in exchange for an end to the nation's support of Israel. Shortly after the offer was made the Solomon Islands' foreign minister visited Tehran. Michael Ronen, Israel's ambassador to the Solomon Islands, said in response to the Yedioth report that "Israelis very active in nurturing its relations with countries in the region". "We don't believe in conditions and we don't offer money in exchange for support" Ronen added. "We offer mainly humanitarian support, in order to stress that we are a positive power in the region." He added that small states will always be tempted by cash donations. "Iran won the support of the Solomon Islands for $200,000. I won't offer $250,000 to overturn the decision. Israel does not buy support for money," Ronen said. "The Solomon Islands have never been supportive of Israel. It has never been against us but has always refrained or been absent from votes. Israel also has a lot of friends here in the press and the social sector, but we won't threaten them to remove our support," he added. The public in the Solomon Islands and the media, which reject ties with Iran, will do this and the local government will pay with public opinion." The Solomon Islands is a very poor nation made up of 990 islands inhabited by 600,000 residents. More at YNet
 As it turns out, the anti-minaret vote coincides with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
For the second time in the past ten days, two weeks before the anti-minaret vote, the Petit-Saconnex mosque (Geneva), filed a complaint by the police.
On Saturday, Nov. 7th, the residents were woken up at 7AM by a call to prayer organized by the right-wing group Jeunes identitaires genevois (JIG). The call was made through a megaphone mounted on a car (JIG video here).
JIG chose Saturday since the Muslims organized an open day in mosques across Switzerland that day.
JIG justified their action, saying they needed to inform the people.
"We want to show that in case the initiative is rejected, we're de-facto accepting that in a few years such calls will echo in Switzerland," they told Swiss newspaper Le Matin.
This past Saturday night, the local mosque was pelted with stones. The windows, shutters, wooden door and granite dome of the entrance were broken, said the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center, Youssef Ibram. Ibram said that the police took away several kilos of stones in order to check for fingerprints and DNA.
This is the first time in 30 years that the mosque has been vandalized, the imam said.
He linked it to both the fake muezzin call and to the minaret vote initiative.
The mosque hired a security guard to guard the mosque at night.
Sources: Tribune de Genève, Romandie (French) Thanks to Islam in Europe
 BALLOTS at 10 percent of polling stations used in Afghanistan's elections last month will be audited for electoral fraud. The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission last week ordered that ballots from polling stations with "clear and convincing evidence of fraud'' be recounted, and its chairman said 2,500 such stations had been identified.
"About 2,500 plus polling stations are affected by the order and all provinces are affected,'' ECC chairman Grant Kippen told AFP.
"Those are the ones based on our order - that's what has been identified,'' he added.
Electoral authorities said more than 25,000 polling stations opened on August 20 for presidential and provincial council elections.
The polls have been marred by low turnout and allegations of widespread vote fraud.
Mutilated Afghan farmer regrets going to vote
Mon Aug 31, 2009 5:03pm IST - By Sayed Salahuddin KABUL (Reuters) - Lal Mohammad, a 40-year-old Afghan farmer, was one of millions of people who defied Taliban threats against voters and set out to cast his ballot in this month's presidential election. But he soon regretted his defiance.
Fighters ambushed Mohammad as he was walking to a polling station and cut off part of his nose and his ears.
The Taliban vowed to disrupt the Aug. 20 vote, threatening reprisals against voters and staging scores of rocket attacks and several bombings across the country on election day.
The threats and violence failed to stop the election from taking place, but they do seem to have hurt turnout in some areas, especially the Taliban heartland in the south.
Mohammad, speaking haltingly in a hospital in the capital, Kabul, described how militants stopped and searched him while he was on his way to a polling booth.
They beat him with the butt of an assault rifle after they found his voting card.
Then they took out a knife.
"I saw one reaching my nose with a knife. I asked him to stop, but it was useless," Mohammad said. Read all here (Part 2, and 3): http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-42109920090831?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0 H/T: WomenAgainstSharia.blogspot.com
 In the U.S. it is a clear sign of "Islamophobia" and "bigotry" to question whether Islam and democracy are compatible. This Islamophobic, bigoted New Mexico-born imam now lives in Yemen. He has previously called upon Muslims to leave the United States. Now he says that if they stay here, they should not vote. "Voting for the American President," by Anwar Al-Awlaki: The Muslim community in the US is busy with the vote and are debating who the Muslims should pick as their president. The argument presented is we are choosing between the lesser of the two evils. In reality it is more about being American and part of the system than it is about benefiting the ummah because the fact of the matter is there is no benefit in either candidate whatsoever.
Democracy in an un-Islamic system and we as Muslims should have nothing to do with it. Whether one looks at the root and history of democracy or at the reality of democracy today one can realize that it is a system that is not only different than the Islamic system but is opposed to it. Can’t you see that the West in its war against Islam is offering the democratic system as an alternative to Sharia? So if the West, which is the founder of democracy, sees democracy as an opposing system to Islam why are some Muslims still insisting on participating in it and adopting it as their political religion?
Democracy is a Western system that was founded and developed in the West and today the West, not the Muslims, have full authority and right to tell the world what democracy is and how it should be practiced and implemented. We have our own system of government and likewise it is the Muslims who are going to define it and will not allow non Muslims to meddle with our religion and teach us what is right from wrong.
Muslims should seek to avoid any forms of participation in Western democracy.
The promoters of participation in American elections argue that we are choosing the least of the two evils. This principle is correct but what they are missing is that in the process of choosing the lesser of the two evils they are committing an even greater evil . The breaking down of the psychological barrier that should exist between Muslims and non-Muslims, the erosion of the aqeedah of wala and bara (loyalty to Allah and disavowal of the enemies of Allah,) and the risk of loosing one’s religion are evils that outweigh any benefit that may come out of such participation.... Source: Anwar Al-Awlaki H/T: Jihad WatchAnwar Al-Awlaki
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
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Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved.
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BY CHARLES KURZMAN, IJLAL NAQVI
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