The cement skeleton of the unfinished Eyyub Sultan mosque in France’s eastern city of Strasbourg has become a repository for myriad grievances, ranging from local partisan wrangling to longstanding friction between Islam and this country’s staunchly secular creed.The grievances also reflect mounting fears within the European Union about Turkey’s growing international influence.Claiming concern over foreign — and specifically Turkish — meddling, a top French official launched legal proceedings this week against a decision by Strasbourg’s leftist government to subsidize the construction of the mosque, designed to be Europe’s largest.The move coincided with a rare visit by EU leaders to Ankara, where efforts to patch up longstanding differences were overshadowed by a seating spat.Underpinning both issues, analysts say, is the EU’s reliance on Turkey as a bulwark against another massive refugee influx — a reality underpinning a multibillion-dollar migrant deal with Turkey in 2016 which limits the bloc’s muscle-flexing options today.The EU nations “need Turkey — if Turkey opens its borders what will happen?” asked Muslim specialist Erkan Toguslu, a lecturer at KU Leuven University, even as he warned about Ankara’s growing influence in the region, spread through its nationalist brand of Islam.FILE – French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a press conference, in Paris, France, Feb. 25, 2021.That warning appears to resonate with French President Emmanuel Macron. He has racked up an especially bitter and personal feud with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wrangling over issues from the conflicts in Libya and Syria, to Turkey’s exploration for oil and gas in the eastern Mediterranean.More recently Macron’s focus has shifted closer to home. He warned Ankara last month against interfering in next year’s French presidential elections, and his government takes aim at Turkish groups it considers suspect.Foreign meddling or partisan politics?Last year, for example, France moved to ban a Turkish ultra-nationalist group called Grey Wolves, after its members were accused of defacing an Armenian genocide memorial near Lyon. Other European countries, including Germany, are considering similar steps.French lawmakers are also debating legislation against extremism, which would ban foreign funding of religious groups. Among those potentially in its crosshairs: Turkish association Milli Gorus, the main backer of the Strasbourg mosque.In an interview with French radio Tuesday, Macron’s hard-line interior minister Gerald Darmanin threatened to dissolve Milli Gorus and others he deemed “enemies of the Republic,” noting the Turkish association’s refusal to sign a new government charter against extremism.Newly appointed French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin arrives to attend the weekly Cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, July 7, 2020.Darmanin also took aim at Strasbourg’s Greens Mayor Jeanne Barseghian, finding it regrettable she supported providing nearly $3 million in financing for the mosque, roughly one-tenth of the total cost, “given what we know about political Islam and sometimes foreign meddling on our soil.”Berseghian has rejected Darmanin’s suggestions. Another leading Greens Party mayor said he was scandalized by Macron’s suggestion of Turkish meddling. Strasbourg city council must still vote again to release the construction funds, a move that may be compromised by the new legal proceedings launched against the financing.Milli Gorus officials did not reply to a request for comment. But in a recent statement, the group denied being fundamentalist and described itself as a staunchly French association “that has always acted with total transparency, in respect of the republic’s values.” The Strasbourg mosque, with a total price tag of about $38 million, has been in the works for several years, but was halted for lack of funding.For some analysts, the mosque financing spat, and Macron’s warning of possible foreign election interference, may be aimed mostly at French voters, as critics point to the president’s rightward shift ahead of next year’s vote.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks in Ankara, Turkey, March 2, 2021.”That Mr. Erdogan today supports Islamist fundamentalism and acts like the enemy of French security today is certain,” far-right leader and leading opposition candidate Marine Le Pen told the Anglo-American Press Association in a recent interview. “But does he have the capacity to interfere with (French) elections? Not more than any other countries that are influential within their own diaspora.”Longstanding fearsStill the controversy digs up longstanding fears about the role of Islam in France, home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim community and battered by a series of terrorist attacks, as well as newer concerns about Turkey’s influence here.”The Green Mayor of Strasbourg is Subsidizing Political Islam,” right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelle titled a recent headline. “Collaboration or Submission?””Should we be afraid of Turkish Islam?” France’s La Croix newspaper ask in an analysis of the evolving controversy.“The Turkish government wants to use this (Strasbourg) mosque and Milli Gorus as a kind of soft power,” said KU Leuven University’s Erkan Toguslu, describing Ankara’s aim as nationalist rather than religious. “It uses Turkish mosques, Turkish associations and the Turkish diaspora in Europe for its own policy, not to defend Muslim interests.”The quandary of foreign financing of local mosques is a longstanding one in France, where many local Muslim communities are too poor to bankroll construction and a 1905 law separating church and state prevents public financing of places of worship. The Strasbourg mosque doesn’t fall under these strictures because the larger Alsace region where it is located has a different set of rules.Past funding questions, and fears of foreign influence, have often centered on North African or Middle Eastern countries with sizable ethnic populations in France, and less on Turkey. The estimated 700,000 Muslims with Turkish roots here account for a fraction of France’s roughly 6-million-member Muslim community, and its geographically diverse factions are often at odds with each other. Like several other countries, Turkey also sponsors imams in France, making up for a dearth of local-born ones.Moreover, the Turkish religious community here is fragmented, experts say. Milli Gorus counts among several Muslim groups in France, including those sharply critical of the Erdogan government.Still, observers say, France’s Turkish community is increasingly influential and ambitious. Last year, its representatives captured the majority of seats on the French Council of the Muslim Faith, the main representative body, for the first time since its creation in 2003.”The threat is not about religion,” analyst Toguslu said. “The threat is about nationalism. Turkish nationalism.”
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Day: April 8, 2021
Modern brains are younger than originally thought, possibly developing as recently as 1.5 million years ago, according to a study published Thursday. By that time, the earliest humans had already begun walking on two feet and had started fanning out from Africa. Our first ancestors from the genus Homo emerged on the continent about 2.5 million years ago with primitive, apelike brains about half the size of those seen in today’s humans. Scientists have been trying to solve a mystery for as long as our origin story has been known: Exactly when and where did the brain evolve into something that made us human? “People had thought that these humanlike brains evolved actually at the very beginning of the genus Homo, so about 2.5 million years ago,” paleoanthropologist Christoph Zollikofer, a co-author of the study published in the journal Science, told AFP. Zollikofer and lead study author Marcia Ponce de Leon examined skull fossils from Africa, Georgia and the Indonesian island of Java and discovered the evolution took place much later, between 1.7 million and 1.5 million years ago. Since brains themselves do not fossilize, the only way to observe their evolution is to study the marks they leave inside the skull. The scientists created virtual images, known as endocasts, of what had filled the skulls long ago. In humans, the Broca area, part of the frontal lobe linked to speech production, is much bigger than the corresponding zone in other great apes, said Zollikofer of the University of Zurich. The expansion of an area results in the shifting of everything behind it. “This backward shift can be seen on the fossil endocasts, when we track imprints of the brain fissures,” Zollikofer said. ‘Surprise’ By studying skulls from Africa, the researchers were able to determine that the oldest ones, dating back more than 1.7 million years, had a frontal lobe characteristic of great apes. “This first result was a big surprise,” Zollikofer said. It signified that the genus Homo “started with bipedalism,” or walking on two legs, and that the evolution of the brain had nothing to do with being bipedal. “Now we know that in our long evolutionary history … the first representatives of our genus Homo were just terrestrial bipeds, with apelike brains,” the paleoanthropologist said. However, the youngest African fossils, dating back 1.5 million years, showed characteristics of modern human brains. This signified that the evolution of the brain took place between the two dates, in Africa, according to the study. The conclusion is backed up by the appearance of more complex tools during this same period, called Acheulean tools, which have two symmetrical faces. “This is not random coincidence,” Zollikofer said, “because we know those brain areas that get expanded in this time period are those that are used for complex manipulative tasks like tool-making.” Two migrations from Africa The second surprising result of the study comes from observations of five skull fossils found in present-day Georgia, dating between 1.8 and 1.7 million years ago. The particularly well-preserved specimens proved to be primitive brains. “People thought you need a big modern brain to disperse out of Africa,” Zollikofer said. “We can show these brains are not big, and they are not modern, and still people have been able to leave Africa.” Meanwhile, fossils from Java, the youngest specimens in the study, showed modern brain characteristics. The researchers therefore believe that there was a second migration out of Africa. “So, you have a spray first of primitive-brained people, then things evolve to a modern brain in Africa, and these people sprayed again,” Zollikofer said. “It’s not a new hypothesis … but there was no clear evidence. And now for the first time, we have real fossil evidence.”
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The French Open has been delayed by one week because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the governing body of the tennis tournament said Thursday.The French Tennis Federation said first-round matches will now begin on May 30 instead of May 23 because of sharp spikes in coronavirus infections in France. The postponement marks the second year in a row the French Open has been disrupted by the pandemic.The federation postponed last year’s tournament to September and limited daily attendance to 1,000 people.This year’s delay came as hospitals in France struggle to handle the surge in coronavirus cases. The government recently imposed new lockdown restrictions to contain the spikes, including a month-long domestic travel ban and a three-week school closure.The federation said the decision to delay was aimed at ensuring that “as many spectators as possible” would be able to safely attend the event.Federation president Gilles Moreton said public authorities, the governing bodies of global tennis events, broadcasters and other partners were first consulted before announcing the delay.The federation was roundly criticized for postponing last year’s French Open without first consulting with the top men’s and women’s events.
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Several nations have issued new guidelines over the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine after the European Union’s medical regulator announced a link between the vaccine and rare, possibly fatal blood clots.Britain, where the vaccine was developed jointly by the British-Swedish drugmaker and scientists at the University of Oxford, says it will offer alternatives for adults under 30. Oxford researchers have also suspended a clinical trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine involving young children and teenagers as British drug regulators conduct a safety review of the two-shot regimen.Reuters says Spain and the Philippines will limit the vaccine to people older than 60, while The Washington Post says Italy has issued similar guidelines.The European Medicines Agency said Wednesday the blood clots should be listed as a very rare side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but continued to emphasize that its overall benefits outweigh any risks. Rare blood clots have been associated with the deaths of at least 14 people across Europe.AstraZeneca has been the key vaccine in Britain’s exceptionally speedy inoculation campaign, which has outpaced significantly the vaccination rates in the rest of Europe. But the vaccine has had a troubled rollout across the world, initially because of a lack of information from its late-stage clinical trials on its effect on older people, which has slowed vaccination efforts throughout Europe. Many nations stopped administering the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports first surfaced of the blood clotting incidents.The vaccine is critical also to Europe’s immunization campaign and crucial in the global strategy to supply vaccines to poorer countries. The vaccine is cheaper and easier to use than rival vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the B.1.1.7 variant of the coronavirus first detected in Britain last December is now the dominant variant in the country. The CDC had predicted back in January that the British variant, which is far more contagious and deadly than the original version, would become the dominant one in the United States by March.“The virus still has a hold on us, infecting people and putting them in harm’s way. We need to remain vigilant,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Wednesday during a White House briefing.The United States recently surpassed 30 million total new cases, including 559,116 deaths, the most of any country in either category, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Thursday that her country is suspending travel from India beginning Sunday due to a surge of coronavirus cases among travelers from that country. New Zealand has 23 new positive COVID-19 cases in quarantine, 17 of them from India. The ban will remain in effect until April 28, and will include New Zealanders returning from India.India has nearly 13 million total coronavirus cases, third behind the United States and Brazil, and is undergoing a second wave of new infections as it races to vaccinate its 1.3 billion people. The country posted a single-day record 126,789 new cases on Wednesday.
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Moroccan authorities decided Wednesday to enforce a night-time curfew during the holy month of Ramadan because of a recent rise in COVID-19 cases, as scientists announced the discovery of a new, local variant of the virus.Many Moroccans voiced their anger over the decision on social networks, describing it as another blow to many businesses already struggling to survive, as well as to family gatherings that are a central part of the holiday.While the North African kingdom has had one of the region’s most successful vaccination programs so far, it is also seeing a growth in coronavirus infections, especially in Casablanca, the largest city.A curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. has been in place since December, and the Moroccan government decided Wednesday to extend it through Ramadan, which starts April 13 in Morocco.Because observant Muslims don’t eat or drink in the daytime during Ramadan, cafes and restaurants depend on nighttime business that’s now off-limits because of the curfew.Countries around the Mideast imposed some virus restrictions and curfews for Ramadan last year, and several are considering, or renewing restrictions, this year.Morocco has reported more than 499,000 COVID-19 infections with 8,865 deaths.The kingdom has administered the highest number of inoculations in Africa so far — 8.3 million doses for a population of 36 million people since vaccinations began Jan. 29. The per-person vaccination rate is higher than in some European countries that started a month earlier, but concerns are rising that Morocco’s vaccine supplies are drying up and the rate could slow.Morocco is using vaccines from AstraZeneca and China’s Sinopharm. Millions more doses are expected eventually from both companies as well as from the global COVAX program to provide vaccines to low and middle-income countries.Meanwhile, the Moroccan government’s National Scientific and Technical Committee for COVID-19 announced the discovery of a new variant of the virus first detected in the southern city of Ouarzazate. It was not immediately clear if it is linked to the recent spike in infections in the kingdom.The new variant can be classified as “100% Moroccan,” said professor Azzedin Ibrahimi, member of the committee and director of the biotechnology laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in the capital Rabat. He said Sunday that it was detected as part of a study conducted by Moroccan researchers into the spread of various variants.
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A New York social worker and psychotherapist says more is needed to address the pandemic’s impact on mental health, particularly among health care workers. More from VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo.
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