Die Zeit, 06.07.2006

At a well-attended conference last weekend in Istanbul which addressed issues of Muslims in Europe, religious and intellectual leaders from the Sunni world ratified a European Muslim declaration of principles which, among other things, describes terrorism as "a cancer", reports Jörg Lau in disbelief. "Here it was possible to involve Islamic authorities who would be unacceptable in the west – like Sheik Yusuf Al-Qaradawi from Qatar, who condoned the 'martyr operations' in Israel and Iraq. In Istanbul he sat listening patiently in the audience while the European speakers took it in turns to brand suicide bombing as intolerable and un-Islamic."


Berliner Zeitung, 06.07.2006

In Turkey, Kemal Kerincsiz has levelled charges against the novelist and professor Elif Shafak, on the basis of the notorious article 301 which outlaws the "denigration of Turkishness", Arno Widmann reports. "What is new about the Elif Shafak case is that the charges are not based on statements the writer has made in interviews or newspaper articles, but things said by characters in her novels. A woman who runs cursing through the the streets of Istanbul, railing against everything that enters her head, Armenian Americans who say that the Turkish government of 1915 massacred their forefathers – these are the guilty parties that Kemal Kerincsiz wants to see in court. But they don't exist. They are products of the imagination, so he's dragging the writer before court." Widmann demands that a country that wants to enter the EU should be screened on its "understanding of what art is, what it is capable of and what it is permitted to do." See our feature "I like being several people," an interview with Elif Shafak.


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 06.07.2006

After the German defeat to Italy on Tuesday, poet Michael Lentz went "straight to bed. I lie on my back, roll around a bit, stand up straight as a post in my room, where am I? in Kiel, that's right, so those merciless mother's boys deserved their victory, back to bed, it can't be true, it can't be true, it can't be true, no consolation from lying on my side, get dressed again, out of the house, go for a walk..."


Die Welt, 06.07.2006

Herbert Kremp, warhorse at the Springer Publishing House, takes an excursion into the history of the "franc-tireur" and the guerilla fighter, looking for an explanation for the massacre of civilians by American marines in the Iraqi city of Haditha last November (news story). He sees suicide attacks as the last step in irregular warfare, and explains the massacre as a reaction to it: "Psychosis overtook the US marines when they saw one of their comrades blown up by an attack that came out of the blue. Marines are not known for being jumpy. 'They never die, they go to hell to regroup.' But in Haditha they didn't regroup, they went berserk and killed everything in sight." The article ends with the sublime words: "Civilisation is poorly armed, precisely because it's civilisation. It shows fluttering nerves: this is what we call conditional battle-readiness."


Die Tageszeitung, 06.07.2006

Jochen Schmidt has seen "Grbavica" by Jasmila Zbanic, which won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale film festival (more here, our review here). The film, which hits the screens in Germany today, deals with a woman who was raped in a prisoner-of-war camp, and her daughter who was born of this crime. "'Grbavica' does not cater to people with no idea about what went on. No wonder it's such a big hit in Bosnia, at least where it's not boycotted by the Bosnian Serbs (more here). The film is no advertisement for picturesque Sarajevo with its hills, alleyways and colourful wooden minarets. What it does show is the crowded buses where you've suddenly got some stranger's sweaty chest hair under your nose. And in the background you hear the continual throbbing of the turbo-folk music." Schmitt sums up, "while most war films only glorify the logistic achievements of a military machine, the real drama only starts once the last shot has been fired."