Muslims in the West caught between rights and duties , livre ebook

يملس لاو يبرعلا نوناقلا زكرم
Centre de droit arabe et musulman
Zentrum für arabisches und islamisches Recht
Centro di diritto arabo e musulmano
Centre of Arab and Islamic Law


MUSLIMS IN THE WEST
caught between rights and duties


Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh



















This book can be ordered online at
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nd2 edition, 2012

Centre of Arab and Islamic Law
Created in May 2009, the Centre of Arab and Islamic Law provides legal
consultations, conferences, translations, research and courses concerning Arab and Islamic
Law, and the relation between Muslims and the West, assistance for students and
researchers. It allows also freely downloading a large number of writings from the
website www.sami-aldeeb.com.

The Author
Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh. Christian of Palestinian origin. Swiss citizen. Doctor
in law. Habilitated to direct researches. Professor of universities (CNU-France).
Responsible for Arab and Islamic Law at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law
(1980-2009). Visiting professor in different French, Italian and Swiss universities.
Director of the Centre of Arab and Islamic Law. Author of many books, including
a French, English and Italian translation of the Koran.

Editions
Centre of Arab and Islamic Law
Ochettaz 17
Ch-1025 St-Sulpice
Tel: 0041 [0]21 6916585
Mobile: 0041 [0]78 9246196
Website: www.sami-aldeeb.com
Email: sami.aldeeb@yahoo.fr
© All rights reserved 2012
2 Summary
Summary................................................................................................................. 3
Foreword by Guy Hennebelle ................ 7
Introduction ............ 9
Part 1. The Muslim view of minorities ................................................................. 11
Chapter 1. Division inside the land of Islam ........................ 11
Chapter 2. Land of Islam & Land of Disbelief ..................... 18
Part 2. Minorities in Switzerland .......................................................................... 49
Chapter 1.Minorities in general ............ 49
Chapter 2.Linguistic and ethnic minorities ........................................................... 51
Chapter 3. Religious minorities ............ 52
Chapter 4. Minorities, the individual and the State .............. 55
Part 3. Muslims in Switzerland............................................................................. 57
Chapter 1.Recognition of Islam ............ 57
Chapter 2. Freedom of religion and worship ........................ 70
Chapter 3. School and religion ............. 91
Chapter 4. Family law ................................................................ 116
Chapter 5. Food prohibitions .............. 141
Chapter 6. religious cemeteries .......................................................................... 177
Conclusion ................................ 197
Appendices ......... 204
Table of contents ................................................................ 229



General observations
Transliteration
The Arabic alphabet can be transliterated in different ways. I avoid the scholarly
form because it is too complicated for a non-specialized reader. The following is
the equivalent of some Arabic letters:
' ء + ع gh غ
kh خ u + w و
d ض + د i + y ي
dh ظ + ذ t ط + ت
sh ش h ح + ـه
s ص + س j ج
Quotations from the Koran and the Bible
I will primarily use the translation of the Koran by Rashad Khalifa, which can be
found at http://www.moslem.org/English.html
Quotations from the Old and New Testament are taken from the Holy Bible: New
Revised Standard Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 1992.
Footnotes
In footnotes, I mention the name of author and/or the first elements of the title.
Complete bibliographic data can be found at the end of the book.
Dates
Dates mentioned refer to the Christian era. For Arab authors and people, I used the
bibliographic dictionary: Al-Jabi: Mu'jam al-a'lam. The pertinent date of an
author's death is indicated when the author is quoted for the first time, as well as in
the bibliography.
Main abbreviations
st 1 aCst: Ancient Swiss Constitution of 1874, effective until December 31 , 1999 .
2 CCS: Swiss Civil Code .
Covenant on civil rights: International covenant on civil and political rights.
d. (ca): died (circa).
ECHR: European Convention of Human Rights.
3 SPIL: Swiss Private International Law .
st 1 nCst: New Swiss Constitution of 1998, effective January 1 , 2000 .

1 I used the translation published in Constitutions of the Countries of the world, Oceana
publications, Dobbs Ferry, New York.
2 I used partially the translation of the Swiss Civil Code done by Shick, completely reset by Wyler
and Wyler.
3 I used the translation done by Karrer, Arnold and Patochhi.
Par.: Paragraph.
UDHR: Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1 I used the translation done by Susan Emmenegger which can be found in:
http://www.uniwuerzburg.de/law/sz00000_.html
6 Foreword
1by Guy Hennebelle
When the author of this book asked me to write a two-page preface for him, I was
intrigued by his proposal he addressed to the inspirator of a volume of the
magazine Panoramiques whose title is criticized by him: Is Islam Free to be Critical?
But this obvious contradiction was not displeasing for me to explore, because
Panoramiques, founded in 1991, is a bimonthly publication that contradicts the
warhorses against politically correctness; alas, a present wound in the West in general
and France, my country, in particular. Nevertheless, this volume (distributed, not
without paradox, in Algeria, under the title, “Islam opens up to free criticism”- at
the request of my Algerian partner) constitutes a first of its kind. It is the first time,
to my knowledge, that Muslim believers (united by an Islamic magazine from
France) have accepted the principle of academic debate, fair play and fifty-fifty
dialogue with atheists, agnostics and critics of Muslim origin! Exchange of views
advised against, or otherwise forbidden, by Islam itself, that enjoins its adherents
to kill apostates (Dr. Aldeeb recalls this in this book).
It is not altogether surprising that this author initiated such debate, in light of his
origins (as a Christian Palestinian). By definition he is not Muslim and therefore
open to originate dialogue. In this work he calls a cat “a cat” and refuses the
practice, too frequent in Muslim surroundings, to duplicate language or conceptual
restriction that in French we call jésuitisme and in Islam, especially Shiite,
taqiy2yah . He does not hide, for example, that only demographic mechanics will likely
bring about a Muslim majority in Switzerland by the year 2020. This projection led
French author Jean-Paul Gourévitch to likewise write his third volume, African
France, in a trilogy on consequences of immigration to France.
For a long time until now, the responsible press, especially among leftists and
extreme-leftists in France, has forbidden the idea that assimilation of first generation
immigrants from Arabia and Africa is a potential problem. Now we are beginning
to realize that such population influxes intensify problems that only, yesterday
were being caused by an influx of immigrants with European origin: Italian,
Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, or even Jews of central Europe. Hence, following
republican principles that a man is a man, any man is worth any man, it was assumed that
these new immigration waves would have no greater affect on society-at-large than
previously, and racists alone would dread demographic changes.
In French Algeria Jacques Soustelle did not hesitate to replace the term
assimilation with the term integration. He forged this concept in the last quarter hour of
thMay 13 , 1958, to thwart an independence movement, while guaranteeing to the
eight million Muslims of Algeria (since then, up to thirty-five million…) equality
with the million Europeans, while notably merging the two electoral colleges. In so

1 Director of Panoramiques Magazine.
2 The term taqiyyah is translated as dissimulation. Concerning this concept, see Part I, chap. II.2.
doing, Soustelle tactfully introduced an entirely new range of family laws to this
fully-fledged new French population, irrespective of all incompatible Muslim
arrangements with respect to the laws of a secular and democratic Republic, such as
polygamy, sexual inequality, inheritance, etc.
Yes, Sami Aldeeb, you are right to analyse all present or future consequences of
the presence of millions and millions of Muslim-or