2017: The Year Islamophobia Went Mainstream

Islamophobia is no longer extreme; the year 2017 saw it go mainstream in Europe, India, the United States and several other parts of the world.

Openly Islamophobic Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States in 2017. India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh elected rabidly anti-Muslim chief minister Yogi Adiyanath who was hand-picked by Muslim-hating Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2017.  Neo-Nazis made significant electoral gains with their anti-Islam rhetoric in several European nations while Burma and Israel continued to get away with the murder of  innocent Muslim civilians in 2017.

These alarming trends are reminiscent of the rise of Nazi Party led by Germany's Adolf Hitler who brought disaster to Europe and the rest of the world less than a century ago.

Trump's Muslim Ban:

The year of Islamophobia began in earnest on January 20, 2017 with the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump who called for "total and complete shutdown" of  Muslims entering the United States during his successful electoral campaign. Among the first executive orders he signed was a "Muslim Ban" from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Then came an avalanche of a large number of Islamophobic tweets and retweets from Trump's twitter account. Some recent Trump retweets were of tweets from Britain First's Jayda Fransen. These tweets and retweets were swiftly denounced by top British and Dutch officials. Trump did not apologize.

Trump developed a pattern of using terror attacks to tweet against Muslims while ignoring similar or worse terror attacks by others.

Trump closed the year with recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a recognition that prior US administrations had withheld pending negotiations and final settlement of the issues between Israelis and Palestinians.

Hindu Nazis in India:

Yogi Adiyanath, known for his highly inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric, was hand-picked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to head India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

Yogi wants to "install statues of Goddess Gauri, Ganesh and Nandi in every mosque”.  Before his election, he said, “If one Hindu is killed, we won’t go to the police, we’ll kill 10 Muslims”.  He endorsed the beef lynching of Indian Muslim Mohammad Akhlaque and demanded that the victim's family be charged with cow slaughter.

In an op ed titled "Hitler's Hindus: The Rise and Rise of India's Nazi-Loving Nationalists" published by leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, author Shrenik Rao has raised alarm bells about "large and growing community of Indian Hindu Nazis, who are digitally connected to neo-Nazi counterparts across the world".


Rao talks about Nagpur, a town he describes as the "epicenter of Hindu Nationalism", where he found  ‘Hitler’s Den’ pool parlor "that shocked me on a round-India trip 10 years ago was no outlier. Admiration for Nazism – often reframed with a genocidal hatred for Muslims – is rampant in the Hindu nationalist camp, which has never been as mainstream as it is now".

Hindu nationalists in India have a long history of admiration for the Nazi leader, including his "Final Solution". In his book "We" (1939), Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the leader of the Hindu Nationalist RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) wrote, "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

Golwalkar, considered the founder of the Hindu Nationalist movement in India, saw Islam and Muslims as enemies. He said: “Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindusthan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting to shake off the despoilers".

Islamophobia in Europe:

Dutch expert Cas Mudde, an associate professor at the University of Georgia summed up the rise of Islamophobes in Europe well when he said: "The far right in Europe is more popular today than it was at any time in postwar history".

Alternative für Deutschland (AFD), a modern re-incarnation of Hitler's Nazi Party, stunned the world by becoming the third largest party in German Bundestag in 2017.

Last year, AFD's anti-Islam policies replaced its anti-EU focus with the slogan “Islam is not a part of Germany” emerging from the party’s spring 2017 conference.

In Austria, far-right Freedom Party candidate Sebastian Kurz was recently elected chancellor on the party's anti-Islam platform.

Earlier in 2017, the Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party of Geert Wilders became the second largest force in parliament.

The French National Front (FN) of Marine Le Pen received nearly 34 percent of votes in the May 2017 presidential run-off that was won by Emmanuel Macron.

Neo-Nazis and Hindu Nazis on Social Media:

The advent and growth of online social media have enabled a large and growing community of Indian Hindu Nazis connected to neo-Nazi counterparts in Europe and America.  This came to light a few years ago when the Norwegian white supremacist terrorist Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto against the "Islamization of Western Europe" was heavily influenced by the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric which is typical of the Nazi-loving Hindu Nationalists like late Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906-1973), and his present-day Sangh Parivar followers and sympathizers in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who currently rule several Indian states. This Hindutva rhetoric which infected Breivik has been spreading like a virus on the Internet, particularly on many of the well-known Islamophobic hate sites that have sprouted up in Europe and America in recent years. In fact, much of the Breivik manifesto is cut-and-pastes of anti-Muslim blog posts and columns that validated his worldview.

"It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical," Breivick wrote in his manifesto. The Christian Science Monitor has reported that "in the case of India, there is significant overlap between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims. Human rights monitors have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu for communal violence, and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here to confront the issue."

Indian Textbooks Praise Nazis:

Adulation for for Hitler has found its way into Indian textbooks to influence young impressionable minds. Here's how Rao describes it:

In 2004, when now-Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, school textbooks published by the Gujarat State Board portrayed Hitler as a hero, and glorified fascism.

The tenth-grade social studies textbook had chapters entitled "Hitler, the Supremo," and "Internal Achievements of Nazism." The section on the "Ideology of Nazism" reads: "Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government. He adopted the policy of opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of the German race." The tenth-grade social studies textbook, published by the state of Tamil Nadu in 2011 (with multiple revised editions until 2017) includes chapters glorifying Hitler, praising his "inspiring leadership," "achievements" and how the Nazis "glorified the German state" so, "to maintain a German race with Nordic elements, [Hitler] ordered the Jews to be persecuted."

Mein Kampf has also gone mainstream, becoming a "must-read" management strategy book for India’s business school students. Professors teaching strategy lecture about how a short, depressed man in prison made a goal of taking over the world and built a strategy to achieve it.

Modi and Trump:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has built his entire political career on the intense hatred of  Muslims. US President Donald Trump built his successful presidential campaign on Islamophobia and xenophobia. That's what the two men have in common.

Just as white racists form the core of Trump's support base in America, the Modi phenomenon in India has been fueled by Hindu Nationalists whose leaders have praised Adolph Hitler for his hatred of Jews.

M.S. Golwalkar, a Hindu Nationalist who Mr. Modi has described as "worthy of worship" wrote the following about Muslims in his book "We":

 "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”

"To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

Summary:

The simultaneous rise of Neo Nazis in the West and the Hindu Nazis in India represents a very serious and growing threat to world peace. Their combined menace can lead to a devastating third world war with nuclear weapons if these trends are not halted and reversed soon. I hope good sense prevails among the voters in these countries to pull the world back from the brink of human catastrophe.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Hindu Nationalists Love Nazis

A Conversation With White Nationalist Jared Taylor on Race in America

Lynchistan: India is the Lynching Capital of the World

Modi and Trump

Anders Breivik: Islamophobia in Europe and India

Hindu Nationalism Goes Global

Hindutva: The Legacy of the British Raj

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Modi govt exports beef worth Rs.113 crores to Pakistan

http://muslimmirror.com/eng/india-exports-beef-worth-rs-113-crores-to-pakistan/

As per the government data by Ministry of Commerce (Government of India), India has exported huge quantity of buffalo meat to neighbouring countries in South Asia. The Government of India data further shows that India has exported Rs.113.10 crores of Beef (Buffalo) to Pakistan.

According to United States Department of Agriculture data, India became number 1 in Beef export replacing Brazil. The latest data from 2016 show India and Brazil tied on top — with both countries accounting for just under 20% each of the world’s total beef exports. They, along with Australia and New Zealand, are the world’s largest beef exporting countries, as per the US data.

It needs to be mentioned here that India does not export officially export the meat of cows and the beef export here means buffalo meat.

The large chunk of India’s buffalo meat exports are to Asian countries — 11 of the top 15 destinations for buffalo meat by value in 2015-16 were in Asia and 3 in Africa (Algeria, Egypt, and Angola). Russia was the 15th destination — at No. 15 in the list of the top 15.

Vietnam is the largest market for India’s buffalo meat worth 13,125 crore in 2015-2016 followed by Malaysia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iraq stands fourth for India’s buffalo meet worth 767 crore.

It may be noted that Vietnam does not consume all the buffalo meat and bulk of its import from India make way to China.A grey market has developed in recent times, with Chinese traders reportedly using Vietnam’s Haiphong port to bring in Indian buffalo meat loaded on small vessels.

As per the Ministry of Commerce and Industry report, India exported 11, 92,327 tonnes worth 23,646 crores of buffalo meat from April-February 2016-17.

India’s beef export is attractive in the world due to its lower prices, along with the proximity to key consuming markets in Southeast Asia and West Asia,

It is really paradoxical that on the one hand the BJP government is pushing hard for a complete ban on beef including buffalo pan India and on the other hand, the government does not hesitate to export beef even to an ‘enemy’ country like Pakistan.

https://www.facebook.com/IronyOfindiaOfficial/photos/a.877444905611999.1073741826.157200500969780/1699589750064173/?type=3&theater
Riaz Haq said…
A leading member of #Germany's anti-#Islam AfD has resigned after converting to Islam. #Islamophobia

http://www.newsweek.com/anti-islam-party-politician-resigns-converts-islam-789238

A German politician who was a member of a controversial far-right party that believes "Islam is not a part of Germany" has resigned amid reports that he has converted to Islam.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that Arthur Wagner left the Alternative for Germany (AfD), where he was a member in the eastern state of Brandenburg, citing personal reasons for his decision.

But speaking to Germany’s Berliner Zeitung newspaper on Tuesday, AfD spokesman Daniel Friese claimed that Wanger had converted to Islam and that the AfD had “no problem with that.”

The anti-immigration party received a surge in support in Germany's 2017 election, securing a record 12.6% of the vote and raising pressure on embattled Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been outspoken in her support for refugees and migrants settling in the country.

Starting out as a Eurosceptic party less than a decade ago, the AfD capitalized on popular discontent about Merkel's policy on refugees, particularly in her home state of Bavaria, using openly anti-Muslim rhetoric in its campaign material. The party won 94 seats in parliament, although two of those members have since left.

While widely perceived as anti-Muslim, AfD officials have argued that while they reject multiculturalism, they support freedom of religion.

Wagner, who was once a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), joined the AfD in 2015, as the party began ramping up its anti-Muslim rhetoric. A manifesto approved by the party a year later even called for banning the call to prayer and the full face veil in public.

The Russian-German politician was tight-lipped on the reasons for his reported conversion, telling national newspaper Der Tagesspiegel that the matter was “my private business” but insisted that the AfD had not pressured him to leave their ranks.

The AfD’s stances are on the fringes of German politics but polls show they have only increased their popularity since the September election, while Merkel's winning CDU has failed to assemble a majority coalition. Polling at 14 percent, the AfD are only four points adrift from the second biggest party in Germany—the Social Democrats, Politico reported.

The left wing party initially ruled out joining Merkel in a coalition government for another term but as other possibilities for a deal with non-AfD parties in parliament have been unsuccessful, the Social Democrats have voted to begin coalition talks again.
Riaz Haq said…
Anti #Muslim protest gets prayer room scrapped at #PeyongChang2018 Winter Olympics #Islamophobia

https://sports.yahoo.com/anti-muslim-protests-pyeongchang-get-winter-olympics-prayer-room-scrapped-141802474.html

By and large, PyeongChang has gone out of its way to welcome the world for the 2018 Winter Olympics. But not everyone in the South Korean host city is feeling the Olympic spirit.

The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) has announced that it will no longer go forward with plans to set up a mobile multi-faith prayer room for spectators in Gangneung, where all of the Games’ indoor events are taking place, following “strong opposition” from anti-Muslim protestors, according to Al Jazeera’s Haeyoon Kim and Faras Ghani.

“We sat down with them for talks, but in the end, we had to cancel the plans,” Gangneung city government tourism division chief Kang Suk-ho told Al Jazeera.

The KTO’s Kim Yeong-ju told Korea Exposé’s Ho Kyeong Jang that opposition to the prayer rooms was so strong that local officials “could no longer do their jobs.”

Much of the hostility has flowed from the PyeongChang Olympics Gangwon Citizens’ Islam Countermeasure Association, a relatively new group that pushed a petition against the prayer room via Google. The petition — which stoked fear about radical Islam in the South Korean province of Gangwon — has collected more than 56,000 digital signatures.

“The government has already spent too much of the taxpayers’ money on the Games, and we shouldn’t spend more building a prayer room,” Seo Ji-hyun, the director of operations at the Islam Countermeasure Association, told Al Jazeera. He also suggested that Muslims should refrain from prayer at the Olympic Games as they supposedly would while flying or driving.

Islamophobia is nothing new in South Korea, where Muslims comprise just 0.2 percent of an overall population of 51 million. The Citizens’ Association for a Proper Country, a civic group led by Jeong Hyeong-man, has advocated against halal-friendly establishments and warned against “the increase of Muslim terrorist bases in Korea.”

Muslim athletes in PyeongChang still have access to a cafeteria serving certified halal food. And all visitors to the Winter Games who adhere to the faith can count on vociferous support from the Korean Muslim Federation.

“This decision demonstrates that we, as a host country, lack thoughtful understanding,” Lee Ju-hwa, a KMF representative, told Al Jazeera in a statement, before adding, “Instead of claiming that the installation of a prayer room is preferential treatment given to a certain religion, we need to raise awareness that it was to consider others with different faith and beliefs.”

The move comes as another blow to the host country’s attempts to bolster its image as a “Muslim-friendly Korea.” According to the KTO, South Korea saw a 33-percent year-over-year increase in Muslim tourists between 2015 and 2016, and welcomed 1.7 million members of the faith as visitors in 2017.

Riaz Haq said…
By rewriting history, #Hindu nationalists lay claim to #India. #Modi has appointed committee of #Hindutva "scholars" to change #India's national identity to one based on #Hindu religion. #Islamophobia #Pakistan http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/india-modi-culture … via @SpecialReports

By RUPAM JAIN and TOM LASSETER Filed March 6, 2018, 11 a.m. GMT

NEW DELHI - During the first week of January last year, a group of Indian scholars gathered in a white bungalow on a leafy boulevard in central New Delhi. The focus of their discussion: how to rewrite the history of the nation.

The government of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi had quietly appointed the committee of scholars about six months earlier. Details of its existence are reported here for the first time.

Minutes of the meeting, reviewed by Reuters, and interviews with committee members set out its aims: to use evidence such as archaeological finds and DNA to prove that today’s Hindus are directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants many thousands of years ago, and make the case that ancient Hindu scriptures are fact not myth.

Interviews with members of the 14-person committee and ministers in Modi’s government suggest the ambitions of Hindu nationalists extend beyond holding political power in this nation of 1.3 billion people - a kaleidoscope of religions. They want ultimately to shape the national identity to match their religious views, that India is a nation of and for Hindus.

In doing so, they are challenging a more multicultural narrative that has dominated since the time of British rule, that modern-day India is a tapestry born of migrations, invasions and conversions. That view is rooted in demographic fact. While the majority of Indians are Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths account for some 240 million, or a fifth, of the populace.

The committee’s chairman, K.N. Dikshit, told Reuters, “I have been asked to present a report that will help the government rewrite certain aspects of ancient history.” The committee’s creator, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma, confirmed in an interview that the group’s work was part of larger plans to revise India’s history.

For India’s Muslims, who have pointed to incidents of religious violence and discrimination since Modi took office in 2014, the development is ominous. The head of Muslim party All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Asaduddin Owaisi, said his people had “never felt so marginalised in the independent history of India.”

“The government,” he said, “wants Muslims to live in India as second-class citizens.”

Modi did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

INTO THE CLASSROOM

Helping to drive the debate over Indian history is an ideological, nationalist Hindu group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It helped sweep Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014 and now counts among its members the ministers in charge of agriculture, highways and internal security.

The RSS asserts that ancestors of all people of Indian origin - including 172 million Muslims - were Hindu and that they must accept their common ancestry as part of Bharat Mata, or Mother India. Modi has been a member of the RSS since childhood. An official biography of Culture Minister Sharma says he too has been a “dedicated follower” of the RSS for many years.

Referring to the emblematic colour of the Hindu nationalist movement, RSS spokesman Manmohan Vaidya told Reuters that “the true colour of Indian history is saffron and to bring about cultural changes we have to rewrite history.”
Riaz Haq said…
Indian Children’s Book Lists Hitler as Leader ‘Who Will Inspire You’
By KAI SCHULTZMARCH 17, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/world/asia/india-hitler-childrens-book.html

An Indian publisher came under fire this week for including Hitler in a children’s book about world leaders who have “devoted their lives for the betterment of their country and people.”

“Dedicated to the betterment of countries and people? Adolf Hitler? This description would bring tears of joy to the Nazis and their racist neo-Nazi heirs,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement.

Published by the Pegasus imprint of India’s B. Jain Publishing Group, the book, called “Leaders” — but listed on the publisher’s website as “Great Leaders” — spotlights 11 leaders “who will inspire you,” according to a product description on the publisher’s website.

On the book’s cover, a stony-faced Hitler is featured alongside Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Also included on the cover is Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has recently come under sharp criticism for refusing to acknowledge atrocities committed by the country’s military against the Rohingya ethnic group.

Earlier this week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is based in Los Angeles, called for the publisher to remove “Great Leaders” from circulation and its online store, where it is sold for about $2.

“Placing Hitler alongside truly great political and humanitarian leaders is an abomination that is made worse as it targets young people with little or no knowledge of world history and ethics,” Rabbi Cooper said in the statement.

Annshu Juneja, a publishing manager at the imprint, said by email that Hitler was featured because, like Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, “his leadership skills and speeches influenced masses.”

“We are not talking about his way of conduct or his views or whether he was a good leader or a bad leader but simply portraying how powerful he was as a leader,” he said.

The publisher had not previously received any complaints about the book, the email said, including from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

In parts of Asia, atrocities committed in Nazi Germany are poorly understood and Hitler is sometimes glorified as a strong, effective leader.

In 2004, reports surfaced of high-school textbooks in the state of Gujarat, which was then led by Mr. Modi, that spoke glowingly of Nazism and fascism.

According to The Times of India, in a section called “Ideology of Nazism,” the textbook said Hitler had “lent dignity and prestige to the German government,” “made untiring efforts to make Germany self-reliant” and “instilled the spirit of adventure in the common people.” Only briefly does the book mention the extermination of millions of Jews and others by the end of World War II.

Dilip D’Souza, an Indian journalist, wrote in a 2012 editorial that when 25 mostly upper-middle-class students taught by his wife at a private French school in Mumbai were asked to name the historical figure they most admired, nine of them picked Hitler.

“ ‘And what about the millions he murdered?’ asked my wife. ‘Oh, yes, that was bad,’ said the kids. ‘But you know what, some of them were traitors.’ ”

The statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that “Great Leaders” had been sold this month at the Krithi International Book Fair in Kochi, a city with a long Jewish heritage. The 48-page book was originally published in 2016, according to the publisher’s website, and it was still available for sale online on Saturday. It is unclear who wrote it.
Riaz Haq said…
#Trump Organization real estate partner in #India accused of 'large-scale fraud' #realestate

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/379078-complaint-filed-against-trump-organizations-real-estate-partner

The Trump Organization's real estate partner in India is being accused of at least $147 million in fraud.

Two global investment companies last month filed a criminal complaint with New Delhi police against IREO, accusing the company of engaging in "large-scale fraud," The Washington Post reported.

The complaint said the company was "illegally siphoning off" at least $147 million of investor money and alleges the number could actually approach $200 million.

The real estate investment company had worked with the Trump Organization on a project in India, according to the Post.

The two companies that filed the complaint against IREO include the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and Axon Partners. The companies invested about $300 million total in IREO, according to the Post.

The criminal complaint does not mention IREO's partnership with the Trump Organization, according to the newspaper.

IREO's managing director, Lalit Goyal, wrote in a March 13 letter to the company's investors that "as far as the allegation of fraud, diversion and misappropriation of funds is concerned, that is false, baseless and devoid of any merit."

In the letter, he also called the legal proceedings a "needless and unwarranted distraction," adding that they would result in "significant damage and harm to IREO."

Goyal did not comment directly to the Post regarding the complaint.

Donald Trump Jr. has, in the past, praised IREO as "truly a fantastic group." Goyal said in an interview with the Post in 2017 that IREO thought Trump Jr. would be "the ideal partner."

The Trump Organization and IREO had first discussed working together on a commercial real estate tower around 2013, according to the Post, but that deal didn't end up happening.

In 2016, the two groups signed a licensing agreement regarding a luxury office building.

Goyal offered praise for Trump Jr., saying he was "very focused on what the commercial building should be."

"The shape of the glass, what customers like. He was very businesslike," Goyal said in the 2017 interview.

Trump Jr. took a trip to India last month to promote Trump-branded developments in a number of Indian cities. The visit drew some scrutiny after buyers of certain apartments were offered “a conversation and dinner” with Trump Jr. for a fee of $38,000.

Trump Jr. did not promote IREO on the trip, only briefly mentioning the real estate partner in a CNBC interview.
Riaz Haq said…
#Indian #Muslim: How I Got Over That Dark Geographic Shadow Called #Pakistan: “Musalman ke do hi sthaan, qabristan ya Pakistan” (A Muslim has only two choices of abode – graveyard or Pakistan). #BJP #Modi #Islamophobia
https://thewire.in/culture/how-i-got-over-that-dark-geographic-shadow-called-pakistan … via @thewire_in

Pakistan became an enemy that came between my friends and me occasionally, and between my country and me often. My yearning for acceptance of my loyalty as an Indian was strong, even though it came at the cost of irrationally bashing ‘Pakistan’ for its cricket and its politics, and anything that kept me on ‘the side of my people’ was acceptable to me.

So, Pakistan, with which I had maintained a safe distance growing up, came close, uncomfortably close, when my husband had to travel to Pakistan for his journalistic pursuits. It was almost an irritation when my father had to go to the Pakistan High Commission to fetch my husband’s visa in his absence.

My work got me in touch with Pakistani academics and researchers, and that is when I began to know Pakistan as its people. I found a window into their research, courses, and universities, daily email exchange and communication grew, and very soon my Facebook profile could list at least a hundred ‘friends’ in Pakistan. In early 2017, as my son recovered from a major heart surgery at Jaypee Hospital, I learnt of a family who had traveled from Pakistan for their son’s surgery. Our children were in the same ICU, fighting bravely for life, and outside, their Indian and Pakistani mothers shared their grief and bonded over the pain that they were going through. After three months of tough fight, the Pakistani boy passed away, and I remember his inconsolable mother as she cried in disbelief at her misfortune and the futility of her struggle. The little hope and courage that I would gather every day to see my son for two minutes every morning in the ICU seemed ruptured, and I could feel her pain. I hugged her, as this was the only solace that I could offer to another mother, who happened to be a Pakistani.

A few days ago, I was at the Chaophraya Emerging Leaders’ Dialogue in Bangkok. A first of its kind in a nine-year-old Track Two dialogue between India and Pakistan, the dialogue brought together mid-career professionals who represented the next generation of leadership across industry and scholarship from both countries.

---

I can claim to know the ‘people’ side of Pakistan now, which is as humble, passionate, and desirous of amity as are the people in India. They are also progressive, articulate, and ambitious, as are my people.

I can appreciate them for what they are without the fear of being abused and demonised for this. I have come of age. But not all Indian Muslims who are subjected to verbal abuse and violent attacks and are repeatedly asked to ‘go to Pakistan’ will have the opportunity of mental healing. School-going Muslim children, who are derogatorily called ‘Pakistani’ by their classmates, will grow up as vulnerable and marginalised adults. No cricket enthusiast will ever be able to appreciate cricket for the spirit of the game, and no one will offer a hand of friendship.

So next time, when some Vinay Katiyar (founder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s youth wing, Bajrang Dal) asks Indian Muslims to go to Pakistan, we should be able to tell him: I belong to India, it is my homeland, and Pakistanis are friends.
Riaz Haq said…
Rape as a political tool in India
The brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl from a Muslim minority group is not just about gender violence.

Mariya Salim by Mariya Salim


https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/rape-political-tool-india-180419091411624.html


The gruesome rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua district of Indian-administered Kashmir is a chilling reminder of how sexual assault is used as a tool to instil fear among those belonging to the minority communities in India.

There have been many Indians, especially on social media platforms, who have repeatedly claimed that one must look at this rape as a gender violence crime. But to turn a blind eye to the events that took place before and after her murder and to her belonging to the Bakarwal nomadic minority would be grossly unfair.

The official investigation has already shown that there is a hate crime element to the rape and murder - in other words, the victim being attacked by her murderers had a lot to do with her being a Muslim Bakarwal.

The charge sheet reads:

In the course of investigation, it transpired that [one of the accused] was against the settlement of Bakarwals in Rasana Kootah, and Dhamyal area, and always kept on motivating the members of his community of the area not to provide land for grazing or any other kind of assistance…

[Two of the accused] were also against the settlement of Bakarwals in Rasana, Kootah and Dhamyal area who had already discussed this issue [...] to Chalk out a strategy for dislodging the Bakarwals from the area. They were blaming the Bakarwals on one pretext or the other and used to threaten them...

This apart during investigation it transpired that a particular community had a general impression that the Bakarwals indulge in cow slaughter and drug trafficking and that their children were turning into drug addicts...

Thus during investigation it has become abundantly clear that the accused had a reason to act against the Bakarwal Community and hence the conspiracy ultimately resulting into the gruesome rape and brutal murder …"



One could easily see in these lines elements of the demonising stereotypes that have provoked attacks on minorities across India in recent years. In 2017 alone, accusations of cow slaughter (forbidden in most Indian states) against minority communities resulted in dozens of mob lynching and 11 deaths.

Furthermore, tensions between the Hindu majority and minorities have also resulted in communal violence in the past in which women and girls have been specifically targeted, as was the case in Gujarat in 2002 and Uttar Pradesh in 2013.

In this sense, it is difficult to see the sexual assault and murder in Kathua only in the framework of gender violence. Unfortunately, we live at a time when rape has become a political tool to instil fear among minority groups in India.
Riaz Haq said…
#India is a ‘republic of fear’. #Modi's guru Savarkar writes that the #rape of #Muslim women is justifiable and that not to do so when the occasion permits is not virtuous or chivalrous, but cowardly. #Islamophobia #AsifaBano #Kashmir

India is a ‘republic of fear’. The UK must keep the pressure on Modi
Amrit Wilson
The Indian PM is in Britain. Let’s hold him to account for the horrific rapes committed in the name of Hindu nationalism

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/18/india-republic-fear-narendra-modi-britain?__twitter_impression=true

The writings of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the revered icon of the Hindu right make Hindutva ideology and the notion of a Hindu nation crystal clear. In the context of rape, for example, he writes that the rape of Muslim women is justifiable and that not to do so when the occasion permits is not virtuous or chivalrous, but cowardly.

Such writings legitimised the rapes and murders of Muslim women in Gujarat in 2002, and the recent Kathua child-rape case. As feminist academic Tanika Sarkar wrote about Gujarat, “the pattern of cruelty suggests three things: One that a women’s body was a site of almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative forms of torture. Second, their sexual and reproductive organs were attacked with a special savagery. Third, their children born and unborn shared the attacks and were killed before their eyes.”

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It would be wrong however to see these cases as simply part of the violence against women which has been endemic in India. In Kathua, in Jammu and Kashmir state, an eight-year-old Muslim girl was abducted, drugged and brutally gang-raped and murdered in a Hindu temple by a group of men. According to the charge sheet of those arrested, it was planned and executed in order to terrorise the nomadic Muslim Bakarwal community to which she belonged and drive them out of the region. The attempt to lodge the charge sheet against the accused at a local court was followed by violent protests in their defence by a pro-Modi Hindu rightwing outfit, the Hindu Ekta Manch. Two BJP ministers attended the protests and urged the crowd to obstruct the prosecution of the accused.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/18/india-republic-fear-narendra-modi-britain?__twitter_impression=true
Riaz Haq said…
Why India's rape crisis is getting worse under Narendra Modi
Shashank Bengali


http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-india-rape-2018-story.html


An 8-year-old Muslim girl was locked in a Hindu shrine, drugged, gang-raped for several days and bludgeoned to death with a stone.

As if the January killing in northern India weren't horrifying enough, lawyers and right-wing Hindus this month marched in defense of her assailants. Prime Minister Narendra Modi waited several days before condemning the crime, which was reported by police this month, then accused his critics of politicizing the issue.

The case has provoked nationwide outrage not seen since 2012, when a 23-year-old physiotherapist was gang-raped and killed on a bus in New Delhi. That crime prompted calls for tougher laws to address the nearly 39,000 sexual assaults that occur in this country every year.

But more than five years later, the number of rapes reported to police is rising. And the attack on the girl is just one of a series of recent cases that suggest India's religious and political divisions — which are widening under Modi's Hindu nationalist government — are making the crisis worse.

Who is the victim?
Eight-year-old Asifa was a member of a nomadic Muslim community that takes its sheep and goats to graze during the winter in a part of India's Jammu and Kashmir state that is dominated by Hindus, India's predominant religion.

Tensions had been building for years over whether the nomads, known as Bakarwals, should have grazing rights. Jammu and Kashmir is India's only majority-Muslim state, its northern end home to a long-running separatist insurgency.

According to authorities, Sanji Ram, a retired bureaucrat, hatched a conspiracy to kill the girl in an effort to drive the nomads from the area. One day in January, when Asifa went to bring home the family's horses, Ram's nephew abducted her and locked her in the temple, where Ram is the caretaker.

Sedated with local drugs, she was raped repeatedly — including by Ram's son, who was summoned from 300 miles away to "satisfy his lust" — before being bashed in the head with a 2-pound stone and dumped in a forest, where her body lay for three days, police said. Two local police officers accepted nearly $5,000 in bribes from Ram to destroy evidence, according to police.

A backdrop of communal violence
The case received little attention until the police report became public this month, its grisly details and motive for the crime adding to the atrocities suffered by Muslims under Modi's government.

Hindu extremists have been accused of killing Muslims whom they falsely accused of possessing beef, which is anathema to orthodox Hindus. Others have claimed a plot by Muslims to overtake the country — which is 80% Hindu — by forcibly converting Hindu brides to Islam, a practice they dub "love jihad."

In this case, a newly formed right-wing group called Hindu Ekta Manch, or Forum for Hindu Unity, organized rallies in defense of the eight men arrested in the Asifa case, arguing they had been framed. Some demonstrators waved the tricolor Indian flag. Among the participants were two state officials with Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, who later were forced to resign.

Last week, when police attempted to submit charges against the men — who pleaded not guilty — the courthouse was blocked by a group of lawyers who said the investigation was harassing Hindus. Misinformation on right-wing social media channels contended that Asifa hadn't been raped, prompting state police to issue a statement over the weekend saying that the facts of the case were "established beyond doubt."

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, one of India's foremost public intellectuals, wrote that the public responses suggested that the country's moral compass had been destroyed and that "state, law, civil society, now understand only a sectarian language."
Riaz Haq said…
Savarkar’s Sanction to Use Rape as Political Weapon
Sangh Parivar’s silent support to accused in Kathua case derives from their icon Savarkar’s exhortation.

https://www.newsclick.in/savarkars-sanction-use-rape-political-weapon


Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in one of his books Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History clearly explains why raping of Muslim women is justifiable and not to do so when the occasion permits is not virtuous or chivalrous but cowardly. (See Chapter VIII of the online edition made available by Mumbai-based Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak)

Savarkar explains at length that Hindus in the past had suffered from a ‘suicidal’ (para 452) sense of virtuousness and chivalry in showing mercy towards Muslim women by letting them off easily. He gives examples (para 450) of such famous figures as Chhatrapati Shivaji who reportedly let off the daughter in law of Muslim governor of Kalyan, and Peshwa Chimaji Apte who similarly allowed the wife of Portuguese governor of Bassein to leave unscathed.

In passionate tones Savarkar argues that since Muslim oppressors had been punishing Hindu women, the same treatment should be meted out to vanquished Muslim women by Hindu victors.

“Once they are haunted with this dreadful apprehension that the Muslim women too, stand in the same predicament in case the Hindus win, the future Muslim conquerors will never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women,” he writes (para 451).

He argues that had Hindus adopted this policy of ravishing Muslim women from earlier times, their condition would have been far better than today:

“Suppose if from the earliest Muslim invasions of India, the Hindus also, whenever they were victors on the battlefields, had decided to pay the Muslim fair sex in the same coin or punished them in some other ways, i.e., by conversion even with force, and then absorbed them in their fold, then? Then with this horrible apprehension at their heart they would have desisted from their evil designs against any Hindu lady.” (para 455)

Apart from the erroneous notion which “every Hindu seems to have been made to suck, along with his mother's milk” (para 429-430) that religious tolerance is a virtue, Savarkar also identifies the “foolish notion” among Hindus that to have “any sort of relations with a Muslim woman meant their own conversion to Islam” (para 453) as the reason for avoiding raping them. He writes that this notion restrained Hindu men from punishing “Muslim feminine class” (para 454).

In case somebody starts feeling sympathetic towards Muslim women, Savarkar takes us on an unsubstantiated ride through all the wrongs that Muslim women have committed which include enticing Hindu girls and sending them to “Muslim centers in masjids and mosques” and generally supporting Muslim men in their violence against Hindus.

This is the kind of stuff RSS and its fronts have been propagating over the years and Veer Savarkar remains a much admired hero among Sangh parivar followers. It has inspired Hindu rioters to commit horrendous atrocities on Muslim women in Gujarat (2002) and Muzaffarnagar (2013), and many others.

So, for the rapists and murderers of Kathua or Unnao, whatever be their psychological compulsions, the ethical and ideological sustenance is drawn from none other than Veer Savarkar. Small wonder that it becomes so difficult for the Sangh Parivar to condemn them or take action. Small wonder that the list of BJP/Sangh members committing crimes against women goes on extending.
Riaz Haq said…
“SAY NO TO RSS SAKHA IN AMU”, Writes AMUSU President (Maskoor Ahmad Usmani)

http://ironyofindia.com/say-no-to-rss-sakha-in-amu-writes-amusu-president/

1925 marks the birth year of the hateful and terror breading organization Rastriya Swayam Sewak Sangh, founded by Dr. K. B. Hegedwar and the coward V. D. Savarkar. The much exaggerated ‘veer’ Savarker was the same person who pleaded and begged to the British numerous times from jail for mercy and his release. Later, these fanatics shared by common ideology came under the banner of RSS. The tail of espionage and working hand in glove with the British is much known in the history of pre-independent India. From exchanging outfits and staging violence to spiting venom in public meetings there have been no stone unturned by the RSS to break down the social fabric of India.


It was on 30th January, 1947 (1948) when Ganghiji was gunned down by the Hindu fanatic and member of the RSS Nathu Ram Godse at Birla House, Delhi. Soon after the death of Gandhiji, in a letter to Golwaker dated 11th September, 1948 Sardar Patel the then home minister of India pointed out “Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.” What does this vindicates? And why was RSS so much happy that it had to distribute sweets after the killing of Gandhi?

In a letter dated 14th March, 1948, Dr. Rajendra Prasad wrote to Sardar Patel:

“I am told that RSS people have a plan of creating trouble. They have got a number of men dressed as Muslims and looking like Muslims who are to create trouble with the Hindus by attacking them and thus inciting the Hindus. Similarly there will be some Hindus among them who will attack Muslims and thus incite Muslims. The result of this kind of trouble amongst the Hindus and Muslims will be to create conflagration.”

Among RSS’s ideological forefathers the so called ‘Guru’ Golwalkar occupies a big space, in his book ‘Bunch Of Thoughts’ M. S. Golwalkar spits out venom in the following words:

“Even to this day there are so many who say, ‘now there is no Muslim problem at all. All those riotous elements who supported Pakistan have gone away once for all. The remaining Muslims are devoted to our country. After all, they have no other place to go and they are bound to remain loyal’… It would be suicidal to delude ourselves into believing that they have turned patriots overnight after the creation of Pakistan on the contrary, the Muslim menace has increased a hundredfold by the creation of Pakistan which has become a springboard for all their future aggressive designs on our country”

How the narrative for Indian Muslims having nexus with Pakistan has come to fore in contemporary times we need to look back of how virulent this notion was treatised by Golwalkar in his book, “…within the country there are so many Pakistans’… The conclusion is that, in practically every place, there are Muslims who are in constant touch with Pakistan over transmitter…”

There are some serious questions that need to be answered; it is a deep travesty for our country that the heads of incumbent dispensation are members of the same traitor organization.

RSS, which was responsible for pre and post-independence rioting, conspiring and spreading communal hatred, paradoxically in contemporary India claims itself to be nationalist and seek others patriotism for the nation. After seventy years of Independence it is bemoaning to see that elected BJP MPs like Sakshi Maharaj demands to declare Nathu Ram Godse as a national patriot.
Riaz Haq said…
#Muslim beaten to death in #India for allegedly killing #cow http://po.st/b5A0Mo via @ChannelNewsAsia #Modi #beef #hindutva #Modi #BJP

A Muslim man accused of killing a cow was beaten to death by a mob in central India, police said on Sunday (May 20), the latest vigilante murder over the animal considered sacred by Hindus.

Siraj Khan, a 45-year-old tailor, was attacked in the Satna district of Madhya Pradesh state on early Friday and died at the scene, local police official Arvind Tiwari told AFP.


Kahn's friend Shakeel Maqbool, who was also attacked, was admitted to hospital with critical injuries.

As details of the violent assault emerged at the weekend 400 additional police were deployed to the district on late Saturday as inquiries widened, the Press Trust of India reported.

"We have arrested four people, and they have been sent to judicial custody. We are investigating what prompted the attack," Tiwari said.

He added that meat and a bull carcass was found at the scene, but did not elaborate as investigations were ongoing.

Hindus consider cows sacred and slaughtering the animals, or possessing or consuming beef, is banned in most Indian states.

Cow slaughter in Madhya Pradesh carries a maximum seven-year jail term but many other parts of India impose life sentences for infringements.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has promised to completely outlaw cow slaughter in India.

The right-wing Hindu BJP has been accused of turning a blind eye to a rising number of vigilante attacks in the name of cow protection.

Rights groups say Hindu mobs have been emboldened under the party, who stormed to power in 2014. Many of the victims are Muslims.

In two prominent cases last year, a dairy farmer was killed on a roadside for transporting cows and a Muslim teenager accused of carrying beef was stabbed to death on a crowded train.
Riaz Haq said…
#US govt report on #ReligiousFreedom says #Muslims, #minorities threatened in #India. #India doesn’t prosecute #cow vigilantes, notes #BJP’s role in violence. #Modi #Hindutva https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/international/us-govt-report-on-religious-freedom-says-india-doesnt-prosecute-cow-vigilantes-notes-bjps-role

The International Religious Freedom Report, 2017, says that BJP leaders, including Raman Singh and Adityanath, had been accused of making remarks that could be interpreted as condoning violence.
The United States government has claimed in an annual report that Indian authorities “frequently did not prosecute members of vigilante cow-protection groups who attacked alleged smugglers, consumers, or traders of beef, usually Muslims, despite an increase in attacks compared to previous years.”The International Religious Freedom Report for 2017, put together by the US State Department every year, was released by US’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday.“Advancing liberty and religious freedom advances America’s interests. Where fundamental freedoms of religion, expression, press, and peaceful assembly are under attack, we find conflict, instability, and terrorism,” Pompeo said in his opening remarks at the time of releasing the report.“On the other hand, governments and societies that champion these freedoms are more secure, stable, and peaceful,” added Pompeo. The Secretary of State also said that he would host leaders from across the world at a conference on religious liberty over July 25 and 26.The yearly report took a critical view of certain leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh and UP’s Yogi Adityanath, for making “public remarks that individuals could interpret as condoning violence.”“On April 2, Chhattisgarh’s Chief Minister Raman Singh said anyone who killed a cow in his state would be hanged,” it mentions. The document also refers to then parliamentarian, and currently Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) chief minister, Yogi Adityanath for saying that “Mother Teresa had been on a mission to Christianize India.”The report further highlights that BJP leaders were tacitly backing people accused of carrying out mob-lynchings of Muslims, as it mentioned the September 2015 incident involving the killing of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh.“In October 2017 media reported a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state legislator in Uttar Pradesh was working to help the 18 charged individuals out on bail secure employment and the family of one of the accused that died in jail would receive 800,000 rupees ($12,500),” it said.The report also notes, “Members of civil society and religious minorities stated that under the current government, religious minority communities felt increasingly vulnerable due to Hindu nationalist groups engaging in violence against non-Hindu individuals and their places of worship.”The religious liberty report also mentions the surge in attacks on Christians under the current government, noting that they had jumped from 348 in 2016 to 736 in 2017. The figures were taken from the Union of Catholic Asian News, as per the US report.

The report goes on to scrutinise the role of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Ministry of Home Affairs, noting that the government agencies had been accused of coming out with misleading reports on communal violence on several occasions.Dwelling on the sectarian violence in Kairana in 2013, the report says that the National Human Rights’ Commission’s (NHRC) claims that members of Muslims community were responsible for driving out Hindus from the affected areas had been disputed by human rights activists.“Human rights activists acting on behalf of the Muslim community in Kairana, such as Harsh Mander, disputed the NHRC’s findings that Hindus had been driven out by Muslim crime and called on the NHRC to withdraw and apologize for the report, which the human rights activists stated had been used to spread prejudice against the Muslim community,” it states.
Riaz Haq said…
Study: One in two #Indian #Muslims fears being falsely accused in #terrorism cases. #Modi #Hindutva #Islamophobia

https://theprint.in/governance/one-in-two-indian-muslims-fears-being-falsely-accused-in-terrorism-cases-finds-study/69295/

A survey by NGO Common Cause and Lokniti shows Adivasis are most afraid of being framed for Maoist activities, while Dalits are afraid of being falsely accused of petty thefts.

New Delhi: The sense of being discriminated against by police is strongest among Muslims, especially those in Bihar, said a study that seeks to analyse the perception about police along state and community lines.

The survey was carried out by NGO Common Cause and Lokniti, a research initiative of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), among 15,563 respondents across 22 states in June and July 2017.

“Among the total number of respondents, 26 per cent of Muslims were of the view that police discriminated on the basis of religion, while less than 18 per cent of Hindus and 16 per cent of Sikhs thought the same,” the report added.

The researchers also discovered that as many as 44 per cent of Indians were fearful of being beaten up by police, a finding reported by ThePrint Monday in the first of its series of reports on the study.

According to the survey, over 47 per cent of Muslims across the country said they feared being falsely accused of terrorist activities. Trying to explain the perception, the researchers cited the “large proportion” of Muslims in the country’s jails. This sentiment was said to be most widely prevalent in Telangana.

The percentage of Muslims in jails is higher than the community’s share in the population of India, a fact, critics said, that stems from an alleged “systemic bias” against them.

The 2011 census pegged the Muslim population at 14.23 per cent; and, in 2014, the government told Rajya Sabha that people from the community comprised 16.68 per cent of convicts and 21.05 per cent of undertrials.

What Adivasis and Dalits fear
The report suggested a similar fear among the Scheduled Tribes (Adivasis) and the Scheduled Castes (Dalits). According to the survey, 27 per cent of the Adivasis said they feared being framed for anti-state Maoist activities, while 35 per cent of Dalits held a similar fear regarding petty thefts.

“Nearly two in every five… respondents said police falsely implicated members of backward castes such as Dalits in petty crimes including theft, robbery, dacoity,” the report said.

“One in four… was of the opinion that such a false implication of Adivasis and Muslims did occur,” it added.

The results of the survey also suggested a perception that caste-based discrimination among police personnel was most prevalent in Bihar, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

It said people were more likely to report class-based discriminatory attitudes of police, followed by gender- and caste-based discrimination.
Riaz Haq said…
NY Times History of Islam in America

https://youtu.be/lSycg4APyu4

Muslims arrived with Columbus and have been leaving their mark on American culture and society ever since. Did you know that the Statue of Liberty was based on an Egyptian Muslim woman and that two of the oldest mosques in the United States are in Ross, N.D., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa? In the video above, we explain many other ways Muslim history is tightly woven into American life.

Muslims have been here since the time of the earliest explorers and have left their mark on everything from the White House to the Marine Corps uniform.

By Hussein Rashid, Negin Farsad and Joshua Seftel

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/contributors/muslims-united-states-history-islam.html
Riaz Haq said…
Tulsi Gabbard for President 2020 is rising progressive star, despite her support for #Hindu Nationalists. Her progressive domestic politics at odds with her support for #Modi, #Sisi, Bashar al-#Assad. #Islamophobia #India #Gabbard2020 #BJP https://interc.pt/2F7z1zv by @shankarmya

Modi’s ascent has normalized nationalist rhetoric, the silencing of dissent, and violence against religious minorities in India — and it’s also had global implications. Elected prime minister in 2014, he was one of the first of a class of populist autocrats who’ve risen to power in recent years. That group includes Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was elected in the same month as Modi; Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who’s been in office for more than a decade but has been increasingly consolidating power; Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, whose war on drugs has killed thousands of people; Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected in October despite his pro-military dictatorship stance; and, of course, America’s Donald Trump.

In the United States, Modi’s reputation has been helped by a group of Hindu-American supporters with links to the RSS and other Hindu nationalist organizations, who’ve been working in tandem with a peculiar congressional ally: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, the first Hindu in Congress.

Gabbard — a member of the House committees on Foreign Affairs and Armed Services, and co-chair of the India Caucus — is an oddity in American politics. Ever since her 2016 resignation from the Democratic National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders for president, she has been a rising star in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Last year, she racked up endorsements from groups like Progressive Democrats of America and Our Revolution, and she sailed to re-election.

But she has also become a polarizing figure. Her progressive domestic politics are at odds with her support for authoritarians abroad, including Modi, Sisi, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. As right-wing nationalism rises across the globe, it is beginning to be recognized as an existential threat to a world order rooted in liberal democratic values, and Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, is now being pushed to choose sides. (Gabbard did not respond to The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment.)

Gabbard was embraced early on by pro-Modi elements of the Hindu-American diaspora in the U.S., who have donated generously to her campaigns. But as she flirts with the idea of running for president, she has publicly cut ties with those fervent supporters on at least one occasion, while continuing to court them in private.

IN JUNE 2014, after Modi won the election, nearly 700 of his supporters gathered at a Hindu temple in Atlanta to celebrate and plan their path forward. To mobilize their community, the speakers laid out a plan that included a call for donations to Gabbard’s re-election campaign. They described the Hawaii Democrat as an “American Hindu” who “has fought against the anti-Modi resolution introduced recently by some members” of Congress.

The event was organized by the Overseas Friends of the BJP, the American chapter of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Gabbard had landed on the group’s radar as one of America’s few pro-Modi lawmakers. In December 2013, she had voiced her opposition to House Resolution 417, which chided India to protect “the rights and freedoms of religions minorities” and referred to incidents of mass violence against minority Muslims that had taken place under Modi’s watch. Gabbard later told the press that “there was a lot of misinformation that surrounded the event in 2002.”

Also in 2014, Gabbard attended an OFBJP event, where Vijay Jolly, a senior politician of Modi’s government, was present. He took to the stage and told Gabbard that “with the support of … non-resident Indians … your victory later this year is a foregone conclusion.” She cruised to re-election.
Riaz Haq said…
New Study Finds 50-Year History of Anti-#Palestine Bias in Mainstream #News Reporting. The study, conducted by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, is the largest of its kind. #media #MiddleEast #Israel #MediaBias https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-study-finds-50-year-history-of-pro-israel-bias-in-us-media/254049/#.XEYPJeLL8wg.twitter

by Kathryn Shihadah

https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-study-finds-50-year-history-of-pro-israel-bias-in-us-media/254049/?fbclid=IwAR2MgQAcd1LDDwvutdouYyJEmJm8O95btIZlKhycxH-drdxz90nmEaAJsn0

recent media study based on an analysis of 50 years of data found that major U.S. newspapers have provided consistently skewed, pro-Israel reporting on Israel-Palestine.

The study, conducted by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, is the largest of its kind.

Using computer analysis, researchers evaluated the headlines of five influential U.S. newspapers: the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal from 1967 to 2017.

The study period begins in June 1967, the date when Israel began its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – now officially termed the Occupied Palestinian Territories – following its Six Day War against Jordan, Egypt and Syria.

The methodology involved the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP), a type of computer analysis that sifts through large amounts of natural language data and investigates the vocabulary. NLP tabulated the most commonly used words and word pairs, as well as the positive or negative sentiment associated with the headlines.

Using NLP to analyze 100,000 headlines, the study revealed that the coverage favored Israel in the “sheer quantity of stories covered,” by presenting Palestinian-centric stories from a more negative point of view, as well as by grossly under-representing the Palestinian narrative, and by omitting or downplaying “key topics that help to identify the conflict in all its significance.”

The Fifty Years of Occupation study reveals a clear media bias first in the quantity of headlines: over the half-century period in question, headlines mentioned Israel 4 times more frequently than Palestine.

The study revealed other discrepancies in coverage of Israel and Palestine/Palestinians as well.



Sentiment
For all 5 newspapers studied, Israel-centric headlines were on average more positive than the Palestinian-centric headlines.

Sentiment analysis measures “the degree to which ideological loyalty colors analysis.”

In order to measure sentiment, the study employed a “dictionary” of words classified as either positive or negative; each headline was scored based on its use of these words.

The report explains that journalistic standards require news stories to be “neutral, objective, and derived from facts,” but the reports on Israel-Palestine “exhibit some form of institutionalized ideological posturing and reflect a slant.”



Underrepresented Palestinian Voices
The study also found Palestinians marginalized as sources of news and information.

A simple case in point: The fact-checking organization Pundit Fact examined CNN guests during a segment of the 2014 Israeli incursion into Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. Pundit Fact reported that during this time, 20 Israeli officials were interviewed, compared to only 4 Palestinians, although Palestinians were overwhelmingly victims of the incursion with 2,251 deaths vs. 73 Israeli deaths.

The study’s data reveal what it calls “the privileging of Israeli voices and, invariably, Israeli narratives”: the phrases “Israel Says” and “Says Israel” occurred at a higher frequency than any other bigram (2-word phrase) throughout the 50 years of headlines – in fact, at a rate 250% higher than “Palestinian Says” and similar phrases. This indicates that not only are Israeli perspectives covered more often, but Palestinians rarely have an opportunity to defend or explain their actions.
Riaz Haq said…
In #India, sacred #cows are running amok. Villagers are locking them in #schools. When cows were too old to provide milk and bulls were no longer useful for hauling or generating progeny, #farmers used to sell them to slaughterhouses. Now they're scared.
https://wapo.st/2FHzhW7?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.d7a5b21d1bb4

the rise of “cow vigilantes” made transporting cattle in Uttar Pradesh a risky, expensive and potentially deadly task. Hindu extremists have beaten up and even killed people, mostly Muslims, whom they suspect of smuggling or slaughtering cows.

That all adds up to a quandary for farmers. When cows were too old to provide milk and bulls were no longer useful for hauling or generating progeny, many farmers used to sell them. Middlemen would transport cattle to other states or sometimes to slaughterhouses. Now those networks have collapsed. Farmers must either bear the expense of caring for unproductive cattle or simply abandon them. Increasingly, they are choosing the latter.

In Edalpur, stray cows went from an occasional irritation to a constant menace. This winter, farmers organized shifts to conduct all-night vigils in the cold, huddled in layers of clothing around small fires. Armed with sticks and flashlights, they watched for packs of stray cattle that would trample leafy potato plants and chomp on tender new wheat.


The tipping point came a couple of months ago, villagers said. A farmer attempting to roust stray cows from his field through the liberal use of a stick mistakenly landed a blow on his neighbor, whose head began bleeding. A fight ensued.

No one in the village would say whose idea it was to round up the stray cows and lock them in the school. “When people get pushed so much beyond their limits, what will they do? They will come up with a solution,” said Chhetra Pal, 25, who grows millet. “The whole village agreed.”

In the village of Bedai in the same district, the middle school had just received a fresh coat of cheerful yellow paint when farmers pushed 200 cows into its gates on Dec. 31. The cattle stayed for four days, leaving the school walls splashed with mud and urine. The school remained closed through mid-January, and its 70-odd students were taught instead at a nearby elementary school.'

It’s not clear how many stray cows there are in Uttar Pradesh: The last official count, in 2012, put the number at more than 1 million. The current state government has “disturbed the natural cycle” and left farmers with little choice but to abandon cows, said Anil Chaudhary, a former member of the state legislature from a regional party.
Riaz Haq said…
#NewZealand mosques shooter Benton Tarrant praised #Trump in manifesto. Tarrant's manifesto also praised #AndersBreivik, the #Norwegian white supremacist who murdered 77 people in #Norway in 2011. #ChristchurchMosqueAttack #Islamophobia @AJENews https://aje.io/qgl4a

The Australian-born suspect who shot dead dozens of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, has published a manifesto praising US President Donald Trump and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian white supremacist who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011.

The 74-page dossier, which has been described by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as a "work of hate", hailed Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose".

The 28-year-old, who is now in police custody, also claimed that he had "brief contact" with Breivik and had received a "blessing" for his actions from the mass murderer's acquaintances.

The dossier stated objections to immigration and multiculturalism, and decries the "decaying" culture of the white, European, Western world.

Earlier on Friday, at least 49 people were killed and 20 others seriously wounded in shootings at two mosques in Christchurch in the worst attack in the Pacific country's history.

The majority of the victims were shot at the Al Noor Mosque, while the rest were killed at another mosque in suburban Linwood.

The Muslim worshippers had congregated for Friday prayers, Islam's holy day of the week.

Trump, whose rhetoric is sometimes aligned with the far-right in the US, condemned the "horrible massacre" in a post on Twitter.

"My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The US stands by New Zealand for anything we can do," he wrote.

Moments before, his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: "We stand in solidarity with the people of New Zealand and their government against this vicious act of hate."

"The United States strongly condemns the attack in Christchurch. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families," she added.

Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, described the shootings as a "well-planned terrorist attack", and said this is one of the country's "darkest days".

In addition to the Australian-born man, three other suspects, including a woman, have been arrested, according to Mike Bush, New Zealand's police commissioner.

Live stream
The main suspect also live broadcasted his rampage on social media.

The New Zealand government said it could be illegal to share the video, which showed the gunman repeatedly shooting at worshippers from close range.

The Facebook Live video, taken with a camera that appeared to be mounted on the gunman's body, shows a clean-shaven, Caucasian man with short hair driving to the Masjid al Noor mosque.

He enters the building and fires repeatedly at worshippers as he moves from room to room.

AFP determined the video was genuine through a digital investigation that included matching screenshots of the mosque taken from the gunman's footage with images available online showing the same areas.

In the video, the shooter parks his car next to the mosque and gets out of the vehicle with a rifle. He slowly goes to the boot of his car and retrieves another firearm.
Riaz Haq said…
#Israel lobby #AIPAC gave $60K to group that inspired #Trump's #MuslimBan. The unusual contribution to the Center for Security Policy, headed by Frank Gaffney, was used for ads against the #Iran nuclear deal. #Islamophobia https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-aipac-gave-60k-to-group-that-inspired-trump-s-muslim-ban-1.5449373

An organization operating under AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, contributed tens of thousands of dollars to a right-wing think tank that has been accused of promoting a racist agenda against Muslims. The funds were donated to the Center for Security Policy in 2015, as part of the fight against the nuclear deal with Iran. The contribution was revealed Wednesday by the website Lobelog.

As part of its public fight against the nuclear deal, AIPAC set up in 2015 Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, an organization that invested close to $20 million in ads, publications and other initiatives meant to influence U.S. public opinion against the deal. Tax filings show that $60,000 of the group's budget went to the controversial Center for Security Policy.

An AIPAC official told Haaretz that the money was used for ads against the nulcear deal, stressing that it was a relatively small amount out of the organization's overall $20 million budget.

The CSP, headed by Frank Gaffney, has been accused by its critics of promoting anti-Muslim policies and conspiracy theories. Gaffney's work was cited by U.S. President Donald Trump during the Republican primaries in December 2015, when Trump first began calling for a total ban on Muslims entering the United States. Gaffney later served as an adviser to Trump's transition team, and was involved in the push by some of the president's staff to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

The contribution from Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran to Gaffney's think tank is unusual, since AIPAC is known for its adherence to bipartisanship and tries to portray itself as a centrist group. Gaffney's CSP is considered far to the right of center, and is therefore an unusual candidate to receive such a contribution from a group operating under AIPAC – especially at a time when AIPAC is concerned about Israel's standing among minorities and liberal-leaning Americans.

Last December, Israeli Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer received an award from Gaffney's organization and used his acceptance speech to strongly defend Gaffney against accusations of racism. "I have known Frank Gaffney for many years, and while I don't agree with everything he says and believes, Frank is no hater and no bigot," Dermer said in his speech. Dermer also blasted the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks racism in the United States and has harshly criticized Gaffney's center.
Riaz Haq said…
Ex #FoxNews Executive Quit Over #FoxNews's Anti-#Muslim Rhetoric."Scaring people. Demonizing immigrants. Creating, like, a fervor — or an anxiety about what was happening in our country"Says Ex #News Corp. Senior Vice President Joseph Azam. #Islamophobia https://n.pr/2TkJF8U

In recent days, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel and some of its corporate siblings have faced renewed and withering criticism for the way they depict Muslims and immigrants. Calls for boycotts of shows and pressure campaigns on advertisers ensued.

Last weekend, a Muslim news producer said she quit Fox's corporate cousin, Sky News Australia, over its coverage of Muslims following the massacre at two New Zealand mosques. Her post went viral.

Now, add the voice of one of Murdoch's former senior executives, who says he left his job in late 2017 over the coverage of Muslims, immigrants and race by Fox News and other Murdoch news outlets.

"Scaring people. Demonizing immigrants. Creating, like, a fervor — or an anxiety about what was happening in our country," former News Corp. Senior Vice President Joseph Azam tells NPR in his first public comments on his former employer.

"It fundamentally bothered me on a lot of days and I think I probably wasn't the only one," he says.

Azam was also group chief compliance officer for News Corp.'s corporate headquarters, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the HarperCollins book publishing house, among other properties. He worked for News Corp. from 2015 until late 2017, leaving, he says, without any nondisclosure agreement. While News Corp. is technically separate from the corporate parent of Fox News, they are both controlled by Murdoch and his family.

In separate interviews, a longtime friend of Azam's and Azam's wife said he relayed his concerns to them about News Corp. and Fox News at the time. Both women said that was his reason for deciding to leave the company.


For Azam, his decision to leave News Corp. was a matter of personal pride as well as principle: Born in Kabul, Azam came to the United States as a toddler, part of a family of immigrants and war refugees seeking haven from the conflict caused by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan nearly four decades ago.

And Azam says the rhetoric coming from some of his corporate colleagues sickened him: Muslims derided as threats or less than human; immigrants depicted as invaders, dirty or criminal; African-Americans presented as menacing; Jewish figures characterized as playing roles in insidious conspiracies.

Azam says he saw it throughout the Murdoch media empire — especially on the popular opinion shows of Fox News, including Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, and Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs.

Azam's public remarks to NPR arrive after a slew of controversies for Fox News.
Riaz Haq said…
Eugenics, Anti-Immigration Laws Of The Past Still Resonate Today, Journalist Says

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/08/721371176/eugenics-anti-immigration-laws-of-the-past-still-resonate-today-journalist-says

Nearly 100 years ago, Congress passed a restrictive law that cut the overall number of immigrants coming to the United States and put severe limits on those who were let in.

Journalist Daniel Okrent says that the eugenics movement — a junk science that stemmed from the belief that certain races and ethnicities were morally and genetically superior to others — informed the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted entrance to the U.S.

"Eugenics was used as a primary weapon in the effort to keep Southern and Eastern Europeans out of the country," Okrent says. "[The eugenics movement] made it a palatable act, because it was based on science or presumed science."

Okrent notes the 1924 law drastically cut the number of Jews, Italians, Greeks and Eastern Europeans that could enter the country. Even during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and dying, access remained limited. The limits remained in place until 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act ended immigration restrictions based on nationality, ethnicity and race.

Okrent sees echos of the 1924 act in President Trump's hard-line stance regarding immigration: "The [current] rhetoric of criminality, the attribution of criminality — not to individual criminals but to hundreds of thousands of people of various nationalities — that's very similar to the notion of moral deficiency that was hurled by the eugenicists at the Southern and Eastern Europeans of the 1910s and '20s."


On what immigration was like at the turn of the 20th century, before the Immigration Act of 1924

Ellis Island opens in 1892 and within a few years it becomes one of the busiest port spots anywhere in the U.S. Ellis Island was a teeming hive of activity as hundreds of thousands — in some years more than a million — immigrants came pouring through. [It] was a very, very busy place and a very alienating place for a lot of people, because of the examination that people had to go through, particularly for tuberculosis, trachoma and other diseases. But once through the line, and then onto the ferry boat that took people to Manhattan, it was really a wonderful place to have been.

On the Immigration Act of 1924, and the quotas set up to restrict immigration

First, there is an overall quota. At various times it was 300,000 people, then it got chopped down to ... 162,000 people. ... The second part is where did these people come from? And it was decided that, well, let's continue to reflect the population of America as it has become, so we will decide where people can come from based on how many people of their same nationality were already here. ...

If 10 percent of the current American population came from country A, then 10 percent of that year's immigrants could come from country A. Except — and this is probably the most malign and dishonest thing that came out of this entire movement — they didn't do this on the basis of the 1920 census, which had been conducted just four years before, or the 1910, or even the 1900. But those numbers were based on the population in 1890, before the large immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe had begun. So to any question about whether there was any racist or anti-Semitic or anti-Italian intent, this established there clearly was. ...
Riaz Haq said…
#India's Young and Well-Educated young #engineers, #doctors, #lawyers, chartered #accountants, #bankers and #journalists Are Marching to the Beat of #Hindu Nationalism whose early leaders publicly admired #Hitler and #Mussolini. #Modi #BJP https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/indias-young-and-well-educated-are-marching-to-the-beat-of-hindu-nationalism/93992#.XOQsnpDZlok.twitter via @ozy

Founded in 1925, the RSS has long counted India’s urban middle class as a key base, with shakhas in neighborhood parks a common sight throughout India. But that relationship was beginning to snap with a millennial generation that found the organization’s rigid hierarchical structure outdated, and the daily physical exercises boring, says Mukhopadhyay. As liberal, left-leaning education and politics dominated India, the RSS came to be seen as regressive among the English-speaking elite of the country. Dhillon’s neighbor, 42-year-old Supreme Court lawyer Bipin Bihari Singh says that people didn’t want to be identified as shakha participants.

That’s now history because the RSS is adapting — except its ideology — with the times. After consulting a top fashion designer, it swapped its khaki shorts in 2016 for smart brown trousers and made the uniform optional. The RSS now recruits door-to-door and offers weekend and virtual events for those who can’t attend daily meetings. In meetings, Sanskrit lexicon is now occasionally replaced by English, and the RSS has launched 65 new affiliate bodies targeting specific professions. Since 2016, an average of 100,000 new recruits have signed up through just the website each year, compared to just over 60,000 annually before that, according to the RSS.

Abhishek Junnarkar, a 38-year-old assistant vice president for a multinational company, says the RSS “trains us how to save our country from people who want to overpower us.” That sense of threat from an often-unspecified source — be it Muslims, Christian missionaries, Pakistan, communists or secular liberals — is at the heart of the RSS training.

Take the common shakha game Lahore Kiska Hai (Whose is Lahore). The group leader asks, “Lahore kiska hai,” and players shout back, “Lahore hamara hain (Lahore is ours).” Players then push each other to grab a stone that’s meant to symbolize Lahore. The RSS vision for India, after all, includes most of South Asia as a single nation.

Modi’s muscular nationalism fits this narrative. “People want to work for the nation the way he does,” says Ajay Mudpe, RSS publicity head in the Konkan region. But working “for the nation” can mean “othering” those the RSS sees as outsiders. A WhatsApp campaign in a Noida neighborhood, for example, led to a boycott of Bengali Muslim household helpers who were en masse labeled “ illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Meanwhile, the National Voters Forum, an affiliate of the formally apolitical RSS, has been urging professionals to vote for a party that works for the “interest of the nation” — code for the BJP.

Back in Supreme Towers, Dhillon says he’ll stay with the RSS no matter how the BJP does this week. The deep roots the organization has put down in India’s high-rise apartment blocks aren’t going anywhere. “Once in RSS, always in RSS,” he says.

Riaz Haq said…
Republican members of Congress stayed away from Iftar organized by Muslim lawmakers in Washington https://www.npr.org/2019/05/21/725308102/muslim-lawmakers-host-ramadan-feast-at-capitol

As Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was wrapping up her remarks to the crowd at a Ramadan gathering on Capitol Hill late Monday, she spotted a familiar face in the front row.

It was Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who was famously mocked by then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 race. Omar told the audience she remembered how Trump had belittled Khan's wife by saying he wasn't sure if Muslim women were allowed to speak.

"Little did they know they were going to get the two loudest Muslim women in the country in Congress!" Omar said, drawing cheers from the largely Muslim audience.

Omar and Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, certainly are known for their words. Exuberant outbursts, tone-deaf tweets, ahistorical musings, slips of the tongue – whatever the intention, virtually anything they say becomes fodder for right-wing media outlets that depict them as dangerously anti-American.

In the relentless noise surrounding Tlaib and Omar, the gathering Monday night stood out for the quiet.

The two were in the Capitol for an invitation-only iftar, the meal that breaks the fast at sundown each day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, traditionally a time for introspection and goodwill. Apart from brief remarks, both women stayed away from the microphone. They hugged friends and exchanged the seasonal greeting, "Ramadan mubarak."

At one point, Omar bowed her head and seemed to tune out the world, as if she weren't being stared at by a roomful of fans who all wanted selfies with her. After an imam recited the Islamic call to prayer, signaling it was time to break the fast, Omar plucked a date from a bowl on her table and took a bite. Camera shutters clicked like paparazzi on a Hollywood red carpet.

The small expressions of faith that make Omar and Tlaib curiosities on the Hill are what make them familiar and thrilling to the dozens of Muslim supporters who clamored around them. Several offered prayers and encouragement. "Stay strong!" one man told Omar.

In speeches from the podium and in conversations over ice-cream sundaes, Muslim guests repeated two main themes: pride in having their faith reflected in Congress and dismay at the ferocity of the criticism leveled at the Muslim representatives.

"Everything that they say is picked apart, 10 times more, every single day, no matter what it is," said Haval Salih, who works in the medical field and was invited to the iftar by a friend. "It just shows how strong they are. They're still here, they're still pushing for change, they're still giving us hope."

The iftar was organized by the nonprofit Muslim Advocates in coordination with the offices of Tlaib, Omar and the third Muslim in Congress, long-serving Democratic Rep. André Carson of Indiana. Several prominent Democrats attended, including Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, respectively the number-two ranking Democrats in the Senate and House, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

The event filled a void on the social calendars of Muslims in the Washington political class. The White House iftar once was the highest-profile invitation of the season, but that's changed since President Barack Obama left office.

Trump, who's repeatedly bashed Islam and Muslims, issued a Ramadan greeting this year that called for work toward "a more harmonious and respectful society." The White House iftar's guest list, however, has narrowed to mainly diplomats. No more invitations for Muslim community leaders – a relief for many who privately say they'd boycott, anyway, because of the travel ban and Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric.


Riaz Haq said…
In a speech last year #DalaiLama said that refugees to the #EuropeanUnion should ultimately return home, adding that "Europe is for Europeans" "A limited number is OK, but the whole of #Europe [will] eventually become #Muslim country, #African country:. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48772175

The Dalai Lama's world view is inherently global. When we discuss Brexit he tells me that he is "an admirer of the European Union" pointing out that global partnerships have been key in avoiding major conflicts.

But the world's most famous refugee has some surprising views on immigration.

In a speech last year he said that refugees to the European Union should ultimately return home, adding that "Europe is for Europeans", a statement he stood by when I challenged him on it.

"European countries should take these refugees and give them education and training, and the aim is return to their own land with certain skills," he said.

The Dalai Lama believes the end game should be to rebuild the countries people have fled. But with some 70 million people displaced across the world according to the latest figures, what if people want to stay?

"A limited number is OK, but the whole of Europe [will] eventually become Muslim country, African country - impossible," he said. A controversial viewpoint, and a reminder that while the Dalai Lama is a spiritual figurehead he is also a politician with views and opinions like everyone else.

Later in our conversation I also challenged him on another remark he made in 2015, when he said if he was followed by a female Dalai Lama she would have to be attractive.

In another surprise, he reaffirmed his belief that beauty matters as much as brains. "If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive," he told me while laughing.

His message seemed at odds for a man who preaches a message of tolerance and inner confidence, but the Dalai Lama told me that in Buddhist literature both inner and outer beauty matter. He also said that equality was important and was keen to stress that he supported women's rights and equal pay in the workplace.

As the interview drew to a close, I was struck by how unexpectedly frank our discussion had been, which reminded me of something the Dalai Lama had told me earlier in the day.

One advantage of not being able to return home to Tibet, he said, was that India is a free country where he can express himself openly.

The Dalai Lama's message of unity is universal - but for a man famed for his compassion, he can also be controversial.
Riaz Haq said…
Rising tide of violence against #Muslims in #India. In 5 years of #Modi’s first term as #PM, #hate crime against Muslims soared; data shows that some 90% of religious hate crimes in the last decade have occurred since Modi came to power. #Hindutva #BJP https://time.com/5617161/india-religious-hate-crimes-modi/

On June 22, a viral video did the rounds on social media in India. A young Muslim man tied up, bleeding profusely all over his body, hands folded, was being lynched by a mob that forced him to chant of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Jai Hanuman.’ (Glory to Lord Ram and Lord Hanuman.)

The man, later identified as 24-year-old Tabrez Ansari, was beaten for hours until he died at the hands of a Hindu mob in the eastern state of Jharkhand. The death of Ansari, who married less than two months ago and is seen crying and begging for mercy in the video, has sparked protests in cities across India. His family says they were threatened by the police with a similar fate when they begged to get him treated while he was in custody, according to a report in The Wire. Police have arrested at least 11 people over the attack.

Ansari became the first victim of hate crime in the second term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. He is survived by a young wife who wants to know who in the country she can now turn to for justice. “My husband was my only support. Who will I live for now? I want justice,” she told the TV channel NDTV.

Just two days after the attack on Ansari, a 26-year-old Muslim teacher who taught in a religious seminary was thrown out of a train in the eastern state of West Bengal. Hafeez Mohammed Haldar was traveling when a mob chanted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ ( Glory to Lord Ram) and pushed him out of the train. Hafeez managed to escape death with minor injuries.

In the same week, on June 27, a Muslim cab driver, 25-year-old Faizal Usman Khan was beaten up by a group of men at night, barely minutes away from Mumbai, India’s celebrated cosmopolitan city. When Faizal begged for mercy, the men asked him to chant Jai Shri Ram, now a rallying cry for Hindu nationalists in the country.
----------------

If the first term of Narendra Modi’s rule in India was criticized for dogwhistle politics, his second term sets the ground for fear and insecurity. The hate crimes might be committed by seemingly-ordinary men on the streets of India but the impunity of their actions is being given a new lease of life from within the aisles of the Indian Parliament.

Modi’s acolytes have often sold him as an inclusive leader, a unifier in the international arena but fail to explain the Prime Minister’s studied silence against hate in the country, often manufactured in his own backyard. Leila may be a dystopian vision but it is also a cautionary tale, the story of a once-inclusive India that becomes immersed in hate to fulfil the opportunistic ambitions of a leader who raises Hindu nationalistic slogans. And in Modi’s India, where chanting Jai Shri Ram on the streets to invoke hate crimes against minorities, it’s hard not to see how that dystopian vision could become reality.
Riaz Haq said…
"White Nationalist" Steve Bannon: As a nationalist, #Modi was a #Trump before Trump. #India #BJP #Islamophobia #Xenophobia http://toi.in/9fjcIb46/a24gk via @timesofindia

Riaz Haq said…
#Liberals need to watch out for their own careless #Islamophobia. Our prejudices about Muslims are not even original. Through the last millennium, the West constructed the #Muslim as a threat, as #Christianity and #Islam competed for power https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/to-name-and-address/liberals-need-to-watch-out-for-their-own-careless-islamophobia/

Clearly, melting yourself down to Hindutva specifications isn’t enough if you have a Muslim name.

But forget the Hindu right, who are ideologically committed to their position. What is remarkable is how even liberals buy into similar suspicions.

Our prejudices about Muslims are not even original. Our language and images are borrowed. Through the last millennium, the West constructed the Muslim as a threat, as Christianity and Islam competed for power. Nineteenth-century European scholars of the Orient, obsessed with classifying and differentiating, with racial and civilisational theories— instilled the idea that the Muslim mind is one, unchanged from the deserts of Arabia, sexist and violent and fanatical.

These colonial storytellers gave us our H&M history — Hindus were cast as indisciplined and soft, Turks and Afghans and Persians were all made into generic ferocious Muslims, medieval warfare on all sides was recast as running religious enmity. This British-made history didn’t just set off Hindu nationalists — you hear it everywhere. Then the American Islamophobia industry after 9/11, which cast specific political conflicts as an enduring struggle with a malevolent, medieval other, fed perfectly into Indian politics and majority common-sense.

This stuff is not always about memories of trauma, it is mass-manufactured mythology. Someone I know in Kerala, who has inherited no psychic injury from any invasion or riot, is a library of Islamophobic stereotypes. He quotes cherry-picked bits from the Quran that abound on the internet, gives no quarter to context. He forgets his real schoolmates and acquaintances, as he frets about this abstract Muslim terrorist.

This allows people like him to blank out the violent hate-crimes, the insecurity and denial of rights that the NRC threatens, the majoritarian tilt of the Ayodhya judgment. It makes it impossible to see the facts of subordination and exclusion that the Sachar committee showed. It makes them reduce democracy-as-usual — i.e., responding to interest groups, as every party does — as suspect ‘vote bank’ pandering when it comes to Muslims.

Some liberals are not much better; accepting Hindutva terms like “appeasement” for basic cultural protections given to minorities in a multicultural nation. They hold pity-parties for Muslim women, as though non-Muslim women are much better off, affecting not to know that sexist societies make for sexist practices, whatever the faith.

To them, just being a believing Muslim is a sign of “indoctrination” or orthodoxy. Just speaking strongly for yourself, in this embattled situation, makes a Muslim a “Musanghi” in their eyes. The only acceptable Muslim is the post-faith Muslim, or someone willing to run down their community. Think of everyone clucking over Zaira Wasim’s choices, or liberal feminists bemoaning the hijab without respecting the rationality of the wearer. Remember how Nusrat Jahan’s sindoor was gloriously Indian, but Hadiya’s choices were about ISIS mind control? Most of us know little, ask little, but judge with an airy superiority.

Religion is a source of selfhood, a personal journey and a community, a refuge and a practice. But when it comes to political Islam, we make a point of the Islam rather than the politics. Even liberals divide things into a grid between good or bad, Sufi or Wahhabi, moderate or fundamentalist, syncretic or scarily alien. But Sufism has inspired fighters too; a better approach might be to see totalitarianism and violence as what they are, whether under the banner of Islam or class struggle or anything else.
Riaz Haq said…
#Trump tweets #socialdistancing enforced differently at mosques & churches. #Muslims calls remarks "insulting and frustrating on the eve of Ramadan … our president chooses to use his energy and platform to amplify the hateful words" of the original tweet."https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-04-18-20-intl/index.html

President Donald Trump said Saturday that there "could be a difference” in how authorities enforce social distancing guidelines at mosques versus how they do at churches.

This was in a response to a question regarding a post by conservative author and political commentator Paul E. Sperry he retweeted today.


Paul Sperry
@paulsperry_
Let's see if authorities enforce the social-distancing orders for mosques during Ramadan (April 23-May 23) like they did churches during Easter


Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, called Trump’s remarks "insulting and frustrating on the eve of Ramadan … our president chooses to use his energy and platform to amplify the hateful words" of the original tweet."

"As is often the case, the President is yet again stoking anti-Muslim hate and sowing division at a time when he is failing to do his job," Khera said.

Asked if he thought mosques might not follow the social distancing guidelines, Trump responded, "I don't think that at all. I'm somebody who believes in faith. It matters not what your faith is. But politicians treat different faiths differently. I don't know what happened with our country. But the Christian faith is treated much differently than it was, and I think it's treated unfairly."

The retweet ignores the fact that President Trump is pushing for states to ease social distancing guidelines if they are ready to do so, and for weeks has been pushing for some of those restrictions to be lifted by May 1. Ramadan will be observed between April 23 and May 23 this year.
Riaz Haq said…
#Islamophobia is undoing years of #NewDelhi’s diplomatic gains in the #MiddleEast. The blatant abuse of #India’s #Muslim communities now places at risk New Delhi’s carefully tailored diplomatic approach to the Middle East. #Modi #Hindutva #BJP https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/05/gulf-states-backtracking-india/

Official reports suggest that the coronavirus outbreak has only had a limited impact on India’s population—at least so far. But despite the relatively low reported numbers of infections and deaths, India’s Muslim community has faced online and physical assaults during the coronavirus crisis—incidents in which members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are also implicated. The attacks came in the wake of news that an Islamic sect, the Tablighi Jamaat, held a large annual meeting in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin district in early March, right as countries were beginning to restrict public gatherings to prevent the virus’s spread. With nearly 3,000 pilgrims from over a dozen countries packed in cramped quarters, the coronavirus spread rapidly; the assembly has now been identified as a major source of infections in India. There is little question that holding this meeting—despite widespread knowledge of the virus—was reckless. But the blatant abuse of India’s Muslim communities now places at risk New Delhi’s carefully tailored diplomatic approach to the Middle East, and especially toward the Gulf states.

In a rare public move, Princess Hend al-Qassimi of the UAE has been expressing her dissatisfaction with a rising Islamophobia among Indians. “I miss the peaceful India,” she tweeted on May 4. And that came after she directly highlighted a tweet from an Indian living in the UAE as “openly racist and discriminatory,” reminding her followers that the punishment for hate speech could be a fine and even expulsion. These statements have followed other expressions of concern over the BJP’s treatment of Indian Muslims from across the Islamic world, including from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which urged India to take urgent steps to protect the rights of its Muslim minority. This last criticism is particularly damning, as India had actively worked to repair its historically problematic ties with the group and had managed to be invited as guest of honor at the annual Organisation of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in March 2019.

This turn of events must be of concern to the Modi government. Through its so-called Think West policy, India had built robust bonds with the UAE and Saudi Arabia while maintaining its long-standing relationship with Iran and elevating ties with Israel. In August 2015, Modi became the first Indian prime minister in 34 years to travel to the UAE and visited the Emirates again in 2018 and 2019. During his last visit, he received the Order of Zayed, the UAE’s highest civil decoration, in recognition of his role in improving ties between the two countries. Modi also traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and Iran in a calibrated outreach to the Gulf region’s powers. All these trips were reciprocated by visits of Gulf dignitaries to New Delhi during the same time period.
Riaz Haq said…
#US city bans #police training in #Israel. “The Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police have a long history of violence and harm against Palestinian people and Jews of color”. #Israeli tactics further militarize US police. #GeorgeFloydMurder https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/north-carolina-city-bans-any-training-with-israel-police-or-idf-552411

A city in North Carolina has become the first municipality in the United States to ban training and other forms of exchange between its police department and Israel’s military or police.
The Durham City Council voted 6-0 to adopt the policy after a petition by a coalition of activist groups called “Demilitarize! From Durham2Palestine,” which includes Jewish Voice for Peace, garnered close to 1,400 signatures.

“The Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police have a long history of violence and harm against Palestinian people and Jews of color,” the petition stated. “They persist in using tactics of extrajudicial killing, excessive force, racial profiling and repression of social justice movements. Such tactics have been condemned by international human rights organizations for violating the human rights of Palestinians.”
“These tactics further militarize US police forces that train in Israel, and this training helps the police terrorize black and brown communities here in the US,” it added.
Opponents said the ban was antisemitic as it vilifies and singles out Israel. According to local media, Durham’s Fraternal Order of Police lodge opposed the ban, writing to the city council that it “serves to push the anti-police agenda.” The city council also received pushback from the Anti-Defamation League, local rabbis and local Jewish Groups.
A statement released by the Durham City Council after it passed the resolution said the ban would not only apply to Israel but to any country which would offer military-style training “since such exchanges do not support the kind of policing we want here in the city of Durham.”
Former Durham Police chief Jose Lopez spent a week in Israel undergoing training with the Israel Police and two of his commanders were sent to Washington where they also received training, WRAL-TV reported.

“None of the training had anything to do with militarization,” Lopez was quoted as saying. “It was about leadership, it was learning about terrorism and then learning about how to interact with people who are involved in mass casualty situations and how to manage mass casualty situations.”
In a statement to the city council, Durham Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said since she started her job, “There has been no effort to initiate or participate in any exchange to Israel, nor do I have any intention to do so.”
Riaz Haq said…
#Nazi era #German reminder to all those enabling #Modi's #Hindutva #Fascism in #India and elsewhere. #Hitler #Trump #Johnson



https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/412129-when-all-this-is-over-people-will-try-to-blame

“When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.”


― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio
Riaz Haq said…
Face masks are mandatory but "Muslim" face covering is banned in #France. #coronavirus #Islamophobia #MacronGoneMad #CharlieHebdo #BoycottFrenchBrands https://www.milligazette.com/news/Opinions/33733-replacement-democracy-hypocrisy/ Outwardly seen as a country of equality, liberty and fraternity, upholding the epitome of cultural unity, many marginalised minorities within France would beg to differ. From the racial injustice and economic inequalities that disproportionately affect the subordinated within society, France has been one of the realms of precisely this. Amongst the global pandemic, France’s democracy, the equitable inclusion of all citizens within the State has been replaced by hypocrisy. An absurd ruling that although facial masks are mandatory in public spaces, the full-face veils will remain persistent in criminalising disproportionately Muslim women.
An incomparable injustice, purely ruthless oppression through the State, is the restriction of a Muslim women’s liberty. Perpetrated through the antagonistic relationship between France and Islam, between acculturation and religious tradition, the garment that covers a Muslim woman’s face to preserve her modesty, the burqa has been suppressed in France through the law. It had been in the forefront scrutiny, until, in 2011, France’s assimilationist beliefs turned into State-mandated Islamophobia, thereby outlawing the full-face veils to be worn in public. Unfortunately, this verdict was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights merely on the basis that it infringed the French principle of ‘living together. In unprecedented times with the Coronavirus, France, has seen almost 33,200 deaths from it. Consequently, the country has mandated face masks in public areas. Materials of fabric that cover citizens’ faces by government order for health reasons showcases explicitly that the argument of the French principle of ‘living together’ should not suffice in maintaining the face-veil ban. It is hypocrisy in its prime.
‘Living together’ has proved in these unusual times to be undisturbed and if anything, as stated by the the French Ministry of European and Foreign Affairs, there has been incredible European solidarity in the face of the pandemic and France has played a crucial role in creating this supposed unity. Therefore, penalising women for covering their faces or not covering their faces to fulfil religious faithfulness or for health precautions, is France’s attempt to criminalise and assimilate minorities by force. It is the essence of hypocrisy because it is clear that it is an attack on religious freedoms. It manifests the irrefutable truth that whilst both facial coverings shield one’s face yet allows society to ‘live together,’ France is unambiguously unwilling to include easily observable Muslims into the country’s identity. The Coronavirus demonstrates how unease caused through the fear of lack of social integration through wearing a ‘facial-covering’ has miraculously proved wrong. However, within society, surgeons, dentists, and individuals wearing scarves to cover their faces from the cold have always been observed and accepted. Nevertheless, these were never criminalised nor seen as a barrier to liberal democratic citizens’ living together in harmony. Instead, facial coverings for those purposes have been indisputably upheld. The French ban on facial coverings has shown that this restriction on liberty has always been targeted towards Muslim women who wear the burqa. With innumerable French citizens at present protecting their faces from the public guise, it is permissible so long as the justification is health as opposed to religiosity -- so long as it is for France and not for Islam. This is reinforced through US philosophy Professor Martha Nussbaum who states, “Many beloved, trusted professionals cover their faces all year. What inspires fear and mistrust in Europe is not covering per se, but Muslim covering” (Nussbaum, 2010).
Riaz Haq said…
#France ramps up protective mask enforcement but retains its ban on #Muslim face covering. #Islamophobia #MacronGoneMad #boycottfrenchproducts | The Daily Social Distancing... https://youtu.be/OUhvV-NdXQs via @YouTube
Riaz Haq said…
#Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel: Freedom of expression has its limits. Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. #FreeSpeech #Macron #France #CharlieHebdo #cartoons #Islamophobia https://youtu.be/RZhVq1M3bhs via @YouTube 
Riaz Haq said…
Free speech has limits, Canada's Trudeau says
https://www.dawn.com/news/1587848/free-speech-has-limits-canadas-trudeau-says

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended free speech on Friday, but added that it was “not without limits” and should not “arbitrarily and needlessly hurt” certain communities.

“We will always defend freedom of expression,” Trudeau said in response to a question about the right to show caricatures deemed blasphemous, as France's Charlie Hebdo magazine did.

“But freedom of expression is not without limits,” he added. “We owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others and to seek not to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”

“We do not have the right for example to shout fire in a movie theatre crowded with people, there are always limits,” he argued.

Distancing himself from the position of French President Emmanuel Macron, Trudeau pleaded for a careful use of free speech.

“In a pluralist, diverse and respectful society like ours, we owe it to ourselves to be aware of the impact of our words, of our actions on others, particularly these communities and populations who still experience a great deal of discrimination,” he said.

At the same time, he said society is ready for a public debate on these issues, “to have these complex conversations in a responsible way”.

As he had done the day before with the leaders of the European Union, Trudeau insisted on condemning the recent “awful and appalling” extremist attacks in France.

“It is unjustifiable and Canada wholeheartedly condemns these acts while standing with our French friends who are going through extremely difficult times,” he said.

Canada's parliament observed a moment of silence on Thursday for the three people stabbed to death earlier in a church in Nice, in southern France, by a Tunisian man who was apprehended.

Anger erupted in the Middle East in response to Macron defending the right to publish the blasphemous cartoons of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) in France.

Macron made the comments during a tribute last week to Samuel Paty, a teacher beheaded in the street for showing caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in class in a course on freedom of expression.
Riaz Haq said…
Pfizer has announced today that its COVID19 vaccine has been found to be more than 90% effective in its recently concluded large-scale trial. The two key scientists who developed this vaccine are Turkish-born Muslims named Dr. Ugur Sahin and his wife Dr. Ozlem Tureci, according to media reports. The couple started BioNTech, a technology startup based in Germany, to develop treatments using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. A Morocco-born Muslim scientist Dr. Moncef Mohamad Slaoui is leading Operation WARP Speed announced by President Donald Trump to rapidly develop and distribute a coronavirus vaccine in the United States. Covid19 pandemic is the biggest challenge the world faces today. Muslim scientists are in the forefront of dealing with this challenge. This is particularly notable in a world where Islamophobia has gone mainstream in recent years.

https://www.southasiainvestor.com/2020/11/turkish-born-muslim-scientists-behind.html
Riaz Haq said…
Even before the pandemic, BioNTech was gaining momentum. The company raised hundreds of millions of dollars and now has more than 1,800 people on staff, with offices in Berlin, other German cities and Cambridge, Mass. In 2018, it began its partnership with Pfizer. Last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested $55 million to fund its work treating H.I.V. and tuberculosis. Also in 2019, Dr. Sahin was awarded the Mustafa Prize, a biennial Iranian prize for Muslims in science and technology.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/business/biontech-covid-vaccine.html

Dr. Sahin and Dr. Türeci sold Ganymed for $1.4 billion in 2016. Last year, BioNTech sold shares to the public; in recent months, its market value has soared past $21 billion, making the couple among the richest in Germany.


The two billionaires live with their teenage daughter in a modest apartment near their office. They ride bicycles to work. They do not own a car.

“Ugur is a very, very unique individual,” Mr. Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, said in the interview last month. “He cares only about science. Discussing business is not his cup of tea. He doesn’t like it at all. He’s a scientist and a man of principles. I trust him 100 percent.”

In Germany, where immigration continues to be a fractious issue, the success of two scientists of Turkish descent was cause for celebration.

“With this couple, Germany has a shining example of successful integration,” wrote the conservative-business site Focus.

A member of Parliament, Johannes Vogel, wrote on Twitter that if it was up to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, “there would be no #BioNTech of Germany with Özlem Türeci & Ugur Sahin at the top.”

“If it were up to critics of capitalism and globalization,” he added, “there would be no cooperation with Pfizer. But that makes us strong: immigration country, market economy & open society!”

Dr. Sahin has had little time for politics this year. BioNTech has been so busy developing a vaccine that the company has not finalized the financial details of its partnership agreement with Pfizer.

“Trust and personal relationship is so important in such business, because everything is going so fast,” Dr. Sahin said. “We still have a term sheet and not yet a final contract on many things.”

Dr. Sahin said he and Dr. Türeci learned about efficacy data on Sunday night and marked the moment by brewing Turkish tea at home. “We celebrated, of course,” he said. “It was a relief.”
Riaz Haq said…
#Muslims Not Only Survived, We Thrived in #Trump’s 4 years in Office. #American have grown increasingly accepting of #Islam , and Muslim civic participation has skyrocketed. #Islamophobia - Tablet Magazine

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/muslims-survived-and-thrived

in the four years that marked Trump’s first term of office, Muslim Americans have not only survived—in many ways, we’ve thrived. Americans have grown increasingly accepting of Islam, and Muslim civic participation has skyrocketed. Therein lies a larger story that explains at least some of the poll results showing considerable increases in support for Donald Trump among supposedly victimized minority groups. Most Muslim Americans remained firmly in the Biden camp, with an estimated 69% voting for the Democratic candidate, according to a preliminary exit poll. But so far it also looks like Trump’s support grew by 4 percentage points among Muslims. That is part of the larger trend that is also observable among Latinos, Blacks, and gays, and which has been causing shock and disbelief within progressive and media circles where members of “marginalized groups” are expected to be radicals who view themselves primarily in terms of their victimhood. The flipside of the media skew is not that all of a sudden Muslims, or any other group, are throwing in their lot with Trump or the GOP—rather, it’s that they are assimilating ever more fully into an American culture in which they feel freer to define themselves.

Riaz Haq said…
#Amnestyinternational slams #French claims of being champion of free-speech: "French government’s rhetoric on free speech is not enough to conceal its own shameless hypocrisy" #Macron #islamophobie
@TRTWorld https://www.trtworld.com/europe/amnesty-slams-french-claims-of-being-champion-of-free-speech-41462

While the right to express views that may be perceived as offending religious beliefs is strenuously defended, Muslims’ freedoms of expression and religion usually receive scant attention in France, says Amnesty International.

Amnesty International has said that the French government is not the champion of free speech that it likes to think it is.

"French government’s rhetoric on free speech is not enough to conceal its own shameless hypocrisy," the UK-based organisation said in its report published on Thursday.

"Freedom of expression means nothing unless it applies to everyone. The government’s free speech campaign should not be used for covering up the measures that put people at risk of human rights abuses including torture."

Samuel Paty's killing

The report said the way President Emmanuel Macron and his government responded to the killing of Samuel Paty, a French teacher who showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class, negates their claims of being supporters of free speech.
Riaz Haq said…
#India’s ruling #BJP party invents a #Muslim plot against #Hindu women, accuses #Muslims of being rapists, rails against interfaith marriages, warns against "Love Jihad". #Modi #Islamophobia #hate #lovejihaad https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/11/19/indias-ruling-party-invents-a-muslim-plot-against-hindu-women

The ORGANISER, an English-language weekly that is a mouthpiece for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the century-old flagship of India’s swelling armada of Hindu nationalist groups, is in no doubt about the dangers of “love jihad”. The luring of good Hindu girls into marriage and conversion is only the first phase of a broader Muslim plot, asserts a recent article. The second stage is rape jihad, “a more unequivocal operation in which non-Muslim girls or women are raped and subsequently killed in many cases”. The third and final stage? Mass rape and ethnic cleansing.

Such ravings are not confined to the fringes of politics. Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu priest whose day job is running Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, proclaimed in October that those who practise “love jihad” should mend their ways or plan their funerals. So far five Indian states, all ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp), have enacted or are considering laws against love jihad. On November 17th, for instance, the government of Madhya Pradesh announced a “Freedom of Religion” bill. This would punish any form of matrimonial trickery for the purpose of conversion to Islam with five years in prison.
The spectre of “our” innocent womanhood being preyed upon by “their” boys is not new. Hindu nationalists depict the long period of Muslim rule as a prolonged violation of “Mother India”. During national elections in 2014, the head of the bjp in Uttar Pradesh repeatedly asserted, entirely falsely, that Muslims, who make up 19% of the state’s 225m people, were responsible for 99% of rapes. The Election Commission chastised another bjp leader, Amit Shah, for describing the vote as a chance for Hindus to avenge violations of their women. He is now India’s home minister.
Replying to a parliamentary question in February, one of Mr Shah’s deputies admitted that there were no known cases of “love jihad” in the state of Kerala, at least. Journalists with ndtv, a news channel, found that even in Uttar Pradesh, a police team created in August to crack down on “love jihad” had already dropped seven of the 14 cases it had opened, for lack of evidence. Yet Tanishq, a fancy jewellery brand owned by the Tata group, one of India’s biggest firms, recently felt obliged to withdraw a television commercial portraying a happy interfaith marriage.
Indians rarely marry outside their caste, let alone their religion. The law that allows interfaith marriages is hedged with clauses that permit parents, bureaucrats and other outsiders to interfere. Courts have often seemed keener to uphold patriarchal ideas than to apply secular laws or give women freedom to choose. For India’s 200m Muslims, it is another affront. As one lamented on Twitter: “You can’t criticise, you’re anti-national…You can’t protest, you’re terrorists. You can’t fall in love, it’s ‘Jihad’.”
Riaz Haq said…
NBC Correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin's (
@AymanM) proposed edit to New York Times headline on #Nashville Christmas Day bombing! #nashvillebomber #Islamophobia #terrorism

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1343577495585476610?s=20

From NY Times:

"A Quiet Life, a Thunderous Death, and a Nightmare That Shook Nashville
DNA tests show that Anthony Warner blew himself up along with a chunk of downtown Nashville on Christmas morning"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/27/us/anthony-quinn-warner-dead.html

NASHVILLE — Anthony Warner had a solitary job as an information technology specialist, stopping in to various offices to fix computers. He was 63. He was not married. His neighbors barely knew him.

He sent an email to one of his clients three weeks ago to say he was retiring. He started shedding possessions: He told his ex-girlfriend that he had cancer and gave her his car. Records show that he signed away his home on the day before Thanksgiving.

But he made sure to hold on to one last thing: His R.V., a Thor Motor Coach Chateau that he kept in his back yard.

He parked the vehicle around 1:22 a.m. Christmas morning on Second Avenue North in downtown Nashville, in the heart of a district of honky-tonks, restaurants and boot shops that would often be packed but was quiet in the small hours of a holiday morning. The R.V. had been rigged with explosives and a speaker set to play a warning and a song: “Downtown” by Petula Clark, a hit released in 1964 celebrating the bright lights and bustle of a vibrant city.

Riaz Haq said…
Will #American Ideas Tear #France Apart? Some of Its Leaders Think So! Willful #French blind spots in an increasingly diverse nation that still recoils at the mention of race, has yet to come to terms with its colonial past. #racism #Islamophobia https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html?smid=tw-share

France has long laid claim to a national identity, based on a common culture, fundamental rights and core values like equality and liberty, rejecting diversity and multiculturalism. The French often see the United States as a fractious society at war with itself.

But far from being American, many of the leading thinkers behind theories on gender, race, post-colonialism and queer theory came from France — as well as the rest of Europe, South America, Africa and India, said Anne Garréta, a French writer who teaches literature at universities in France and at Duke.

“It’s an entire global world of ideas that circulates,’’ she said. “It just happens that campuses that are the most cosmopolitan and most globalized at this point in history are the American ones.’’

The French state does not compile racial statistics, which is illegal, describing it as part of its commitment to universalism and treating all citizens equally under the law. To many scholars on race, however, the reluctance is part of a long history of denying racism in France and the country’s slave-trading and colonial past.



----------
Mass protests in France against police violence, inspired by the killing of George Floyd, challenged the official dismissal of race and systemic racism. A #MeToo generation of feminists confronted both male power and older feminists. A widespread crackdown following a series of Islamist attacks raised questions about France’s model of secularism and the integration of immigrants from its former colonies.

------------

The publication this month of a book critical of racial studies by two veteran social scientists, Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Noiriel, fueled criticism from younger scholars — and has received extensive news coverage. Mr. Noiriel has said that race had become a “bulldozer’’ crushing other subjects, adding, in an email, that its academic research in France was questionable because race is not recognized by the government and merely “subjective data.’’


Some saw the reach of American identity politics and social science theories. Some center-right lawmakers pressed for a parliamentary investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at universities and singled out “guilty’’ scholars on Twitter.

Mr. Macron — who had shown little interest in these matters in the past but has been courting the right ahead of elections next year — jumped in last June, when he blamed universities for encouraging the “ethnicization of the social question’’ — amounting to “breaking the republic in two.’’

“I was pleasantly astonished,’’ said Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who last month helped create an organization against “decolonialism and identity politics.’’ Made up of established figures, many retired, the group has issued warnings about American-inspired social theories in major publications like Le Point and Le Figaro.

For Ms. Heinich, last year’s developments came on top of activism that brought foreign disputes over cultural appropriation and blackface to French universities. At the Sorbonne, activists prevented the staging of a play by Aeschylus to protest the wearing of masks and dark makeup by white actors; elsewhere, some well-known speakers were disinvited following student pressure.

“It was a series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all fell under what is called cancel culture,’’ Ms. Heinich said.


Riaz Haq said…
#UNHRC (Human Rights Council) : Institutional suspicion and fear of #Muslims has escalated to epidemic proportions. Muslims are targeted based on stereotypical ‘Muslim’ characteristics, such as names, skin color and clothing. #Islamophobia #France #India https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086452

In a report to the Council, he cited European surveys in 2018 and 2019 that showed that nearly four in 10 people held unfavourable views about Muslims. In 2017, 30 per cent of Americans viewed Muslims “in a negative light”, the Special Rapporteur added.

He said that States had responded to security threats “by adopting measures which disproportionately target Muslims and define Muslims as both high risk and at risk of radicalization”.

These measures include restricting Muslims from living according to their belief system, the securitization of religious communities, limits on access to citizenship, socioeconomic exclusion and pervasive stigmatization of Muslim communities.

Mr Shaheed noted that these developments followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks and other acts of terrorism purportedly carried out in the name of Islam.

Harmful tropes
He further raised concerns that in States where Muslims are in the minority, they are frequently targeted based on stereotypical ‘Muslim’ characteristics, such as names, skin colour and clothing, including religious attire, such as headscarves.

The independent expert said that “Islamophobic” discrimination and hostility were often intersectional, such as where “Muslim women may face a ‘triple penalty’ as women, minority ethnic and Muslim…Harmful stereotypes and tropes about Muslims and Islam are chronically reinforced by mainstream media, powerful politicians, influencers of popular culture and in academic discourse”, he added.

The report emphasised that critiques of Islam should never be conflated with Islamophobia, adding that international human rights law protects individuals, not religions. The criticism of the ideas, leaders, symbols or practices of Islam is not Islamophobic in itself, the Special Rapporteur stressed, unless it is accompanied by hatred or bias towards Muslims in general.

Take ‘all necessary measures’
“I strongly encourage States to take all necessary measures to combat direct and indirect forms of discrimination against Muslims and prohibit any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to violence”, the UN expert said.

Special Rapporteurs are part of the so-called Special Procedures mandate of the Human Rights Council and are not UN staff, nor do they receive a salary. They serve entirely in their individual capacity.
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan joins first-ever 'Int'l Day to Combat Islamophobia'. #ImranKhan reaffirmed Pak support to continue to lead international efforts for building bridges between cultures and civilizations. #Islamophobia #Xenophobia #Modi #Hindutva #WhiteSupremacy http://sabahdai.ly/_nyl


The OIC has decided to designate March 15 as a day to fight against Islamophobia globally each year.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan said the OIC's unanimous support for the designation of this day is a reflection of the sentiments of billions of Muslims around the world.

"Today, joins members of the OIC in observing for the first time the ‘International Day to Combat Islamophobia.' Marking this occasion, the OIC Group will hold a High-Level Event in New York on 17 March 2021," it said.

Last November, the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in its 47th session, held in Niamey, Niger, unanimously adopted a resolution moved by Pakistan and Turkey to observe March 15 as the "International Day to Combat Islamophobia."

The Islamic group is now working with the international community to commemorate the day at the global level.

"Prime Minister Imran Khan has been the leading international voice in raising awareness on the grave consequences of rising systematic Islamophobia and in promoting inter-faith harmony," said the ministry, adding that the scourge of Islamophobia, fueled by populism, hate speech, and lack of knowledge and disinformation, is causing unimaginable suffering to Muslim minorities around the world.

Pakistan reaffirmed its support to continue to lead international efforts for building bridges between cultures and civilizations.

"Through the observance of this Day, we want to build better understanding of Islam and Islamic precepts. We intend to send a message of international solidarity and cooperation. We remain determined to promote values of peaceful co-existence as well as inter-faith and cultural harmony," the Pakistani Foreign Ministry further said.

The OIC in its report presented in the foreign ministers meeting in Niger last year said the spread of Islamophobia, both in momentum and outreach, is particularly alarming these days, for it has emerged as "a new form of racism" characterized by xenophobia, negative profiling and stereotyping of Muslims.

"The rise in hate crimes against Muslims both offline and online, as well as discrimination in education, employment, housing and healthcare sector, among others are well documented," said the global Muslim body in its report.

Studies in Europe and elsewhere have also revealed that Islamophobia is most visible in media and the discourse of right-wing political parties and groups who tend to exploit and build on the general fear of Islam for electoral gains.

In European countries and the U.S., anti-immigration and anti-refugee rhetoric has taken an anti-Muslim overtone and often becomes the central theme of campaigns by far-right parties.

"Pertinent to note that Islamophobia is also on the rise in some non-western countries where the Muslim communities and minorities face discrimination, hatred and violence, including in Kashmir," according to the OIC.

The OIC further reported that during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, there has been a perceivable rise in negative narratives and hate speech in some countries holding the Muslim minorities responsible for spreading the COVID-19, as part of a disinformation campaign and "fake news,” mainly on social media.
Riaz Haq said…
Building a #Mosque in #France, Never Easy, May Get Even Harder. About 2 million practicing #Muslims have only 2,500 mosques that receive little or no public money, France's 3.2 million practicing Catholics have 45,000 church buildings funded by government https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/world/europe/france-islam-law-mosques.html?smid=tw-share

The disparities also touch on everything from government subsidies to private schools to credits on personal income for donations, which overwhelmingly favor Catholics and high-income taxpayers. But they are perhaps most glaring in physical structures. Even as Mr. Macron has pledged to nurture an “Islam of France,” followers of the faith suffer from an acute shortage of proper mosques across the country.

“It’s a total paradox,” Saïd Aït-Laama, an imam, said in an interview before Friday Prayer.

Unable to finance mosque-building themselves, generally unassisted by the state, Muslim communities have turned to governments abroad for help.

But that may now become more difficult under Mr. Macron’s new law, which is intended to combat Islamism by toughening rules on secularism and controls over religious organizations, including tightening the flow of foreign donations.

Last week, the government said that the new law would allow it to oppose the public financing of a large mosque in Strasbourg, in the eastern region of Alsace, where, for historical reasons, the construction of religious buildings can still qualify for government subsidies.

------------

As the temperature hovered around freezing, hundreds of men trickled into a former slaughterhouse on a recent Friday. In the overflow crowd outside, scores more unfurled their prayer mats on the asphalt as the imam’s voice intoned through loudspeakers.

The old slaughterhouse has served as a temporary mosque for the past 21 years for many Muslims in Angers, a city in western France. Construction on a permanent home has stalled since last fall when the City Council unanimously rejected a proposal by Muslim leaders to hand ownership of their unfinished mosque to the government of Morocco in return for its completion. Local members, after donating more than $2.8 million, were tapped out.

Building a mosque in France is a tortuous endeavor at the best of times. Members tend to be poorer than other French people. Turning to foreign donors raises a host of concerns — both inside and outside Muslim communities — that are coming under intensifying scrutiny with President Emmanuel Macron’s new law against Islamism, which is expected to get final approval in the Senate in coming weeks.

Complicating matters for Muslims has been France’s principle of secularism, called laïcité, which established a firewall between state and church. While the government regards itself as strictly neutral before all faiths, the law effectively made the state the biggest landlord of Roman Catholic churches in France and the guardian of cultural Roman Catholicism.

Muslim communities find the decks stacked against them. Today, critics of the system note, taxpayer money effectively subsidizes a shrinking religion, Catholicism, while the system disadvantages France’s fastest-growing faith, Islam.

While insignificant in 1905, France’s Muslim population has grown rapidly since the 1970s, and is believed to now number about six million, or around 10 percent of the total population. About two million of them practice their faith in 2,500 mosques that receive little or no public money, according to a 2015 Senate report.


By contrast, France has 3.2 million practicing Catholics who have access to about 45,000 church buildings, 40,000 of which are owned by the government and maintained with taxpayer money, according to the report.



Riaz Haq said…
The far-right’s influence in Europe is much greater than its new EU Parliamentary group suggests

https://www.euractiv.com/section/eu-elections-2019/opinion/the-far-rights-influence-in-europe-is-much-greater-than-its-new-eu-parliamentary-group-suggests/

Next week, for the first time, the EU will have a major far-right political grouping in the European Parliament. And although it will only rank fifth in size, its influence reaches well beyond the ballot box, writes Faisal Al Yafai.

Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. He contributed this op-ed for the Syndication Bureau, an opinion and analysis article syndication service that focuses exclusively on the Middle East.

At the start of next week, the new session of the European Parliament will begin, after elections at the end of May. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) traditionally sit not in the political parties belonging to their national governments, but in wider, cross-national political groups.

Next week, for the first time, the EU will have a major far-right political grouping. Identity and Democracy (ID), as the new group is called, is the brainchild of the two largest far-right parties in the parliament, Italy’s The League and France’s National Rally. They will be joined by far-right MEPs from seven other EU countries. Together, they will be the fifth-largest grouping.


From one perspective, the new grouping is alarming: 73 lawmakers openly adhering to far-right politics. From another, however, it is less dramatic, and only 10% of all the MEPs will belong to ID. However, merely looking at the number of seats is misleading. The influence of the far-right is far more widespread across Europe’s political parties.

It is the most successful political trend in Europe today, with clear and growing momentum. It has achieved that by espousing straightforward – if ultimately unworkable – solutions to real, concrete problems.

The success of the far-right’s ideas is not rooted merely in rhetoric: they address hard realities in the lives of many in Europe today.

The reasons for their remarkable reach lie in a multitude of factors: the sophisticated use of social media, simple political messaging and charismatic leaders. But more than that, it is grounded in the hard realities of Europe’s recent history. Three major shocks have taken place across the European Union this century, which taken together have shaken the established political tribes.

The first was the major EU enlargement of 2004, when 10 countries joined, swiftly followed three years later by Romania and Bulgaria. The effect on the richer, western countries of the EU was enormous: within a few years, millions had moved westwards from the former eastern bloc.

Then came the financial crash of 2008, which stagnated wages and ushered in austerity measures, which hurt already disadvantaged communities. Within a few years, the migrant crisis had begun, culminating in the mass movement of hundreds of thousands of people to Europe, predominantly from African and Asian countries.

Taken together, these shocks have created political conditions that centrist parties could not easily respond to – and to which far-right and populist rhetoric appear to have clear answers.

At the top of that list is immigration. An influx of migrants, both from the Christian east of Europe and majority-Muslim countries, have changed predominantly white working-class districts, bringing with them economic and cultural dislocation.

Riaz Haq said…
France Battles Over Whether to Cancel or Celebrate Napoleon
President Emmanuel Macron laid a wreath at the emperor’s tomb on the 200th anniversary of his death, stepping into a national debate over the legacy of Napoleon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/world/europe/france-napoleon-macron.html


Jacques Chirac couldn’t stand him. Nicolas Sarkozy kept his distance. François Hollande shunned him. But on the 200th anniversary this week of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death, Emmanuel Macron has chosen to do what most recent presidents of France have avoided: honor the man who in 1799 destroyed the nascent French Republic in a putsch.

By choosing to lay a wreath Wednesday at Napoleon’s tomb under the golden dome of Les Invalides, Mr. Macron stepped into the heart of France’s culture wars. Napoleon, always a contested figure, has become a Rorschach test for the French at a moment of tense cultural confrontation.

Was Napoleon a modernizing reformer whose legal code, lycée school system, central bank and centralized administrative framework laid the basis for post-revolutionary France? Or was he a retrograde racist, imperialist and misogynist?

By paying his respects to Napoleon, Mr. Macron will please a restive French right dreaming of lost glory and of a moment when, under its turbulent emperor, France stood at the center of the world. The French obsession with the romantic epic of Napoleon’s rise and fall is undying, as countless magazine covers and talk shows have underscored in recent weeks.

But in the current zeitgeist, Napoleon’s decisive role as founder of the modern French state tends to pale beside his record as colonizer, warmonger and enslaver. Mr. Macron is taking a risk. Officials close to him have portrayed his speech as an attempt to look Napoleon “in the face,” light and shadow. Others, however, insist Napoleon should be condemned rather than commemorated.

“How can we celebrate a man who was the enemy of the French Republic, of a number of European peoples and also the enemy of humanity in that he was an enslaver?” Louis-Georges Tin, an author and activist, and Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, a political scientist, wrote last month in Le Monde.

They argued that Les Invalides should be turned into a museum of France’s five republics and that Napoleon’s remains, like Franco’s in Spain, be returned to his family. The remains have already journeyed a long way. It took 19 years for them to reach France in 1840, after Napoleon’s lonely death at the age of 51 in British-imposed exile on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena.

“Yes, the head of state, the commander in chief, must bow down at the tomb of the victor of Austerlitz,” Jean d’Orléans, a descendant of the French monarchy, wrote in Le Figaro, referring to one of Napoleon’s greatest military triumphs. Honoring Napoleon amounts to “honoring the French people, honoring ourselves.”
Riaz Haq said…
Welcome to Germany
Thomas Rogers
Since Angela Merkel admitted 1.2 million refugees in 2015 and 2016, the dire predictions about their impact on the country have not materialized.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/04/29/welcome-to-germany/

In 2014 Emad Kendakji’s hometown of Hama became a center of fighting between Syrian rebel and government forces, and he was terrified of being conscripted into the army. “I knew I had to fight or get out,” he recently told me. So, like many other Syrians, the twenty-eight-year-old law school graduate embarked on a perilous journey to Europe. He traveled across much of North Africa to Melilla, a Spanish territory on the Moroccan coast. The official at the Spanish refugee office, however, told him, “Just go to Germany. There is a better life and work there. We are poor.” He took the man’s advice and a few days later arrived in Düsseldorf.

Kendakji was part of the so-called refugee wave of 2015 and 2016, when more than two million migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Eritrea, among other countries, made their way to Europe within a span of months. Driven by a confluence of events including the war in Syria, fallout from the Arab Spring, and worsening conditions in refugee camps in the Middle East, the mass migration prompted a crisis in Europe. Many countries refused to bear the burden of housing and feeding the new arrivals, producing bitter disagreement among European Union member states. According to the Pew Research Center, ultimately about 45 percent of the refugees ended up in Germany, which took in over 1.2 million of them, equivalent to 1.5 percent of the country’s population.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to allow the migrants in was initially greeted with widespread praise. It seemed to encourage a vision of a new, inclusive Germany and a burgeoning moral superpower, bolstering Merkel’s reputation as the “leader of the free world.” But it also drew scorn and schadenfreude from right-wing populists, who argued that it would lead to Germany’s social and economic ruin. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán later said, “If I would pursue a refugee policy like the chancellor, the people would chase me out of office the same day.” Just before his inauguration in early 2017, President-elect Trump said it was a “catastrophic mistake” for Merkel to have taken in “all of those illegals.”

Now, more than five years after the refugee crisis, the apocalyptic predictions have not materialized. According to numbers released last summer, the migrants from that period have integrated faster than previous refugee influxes. Approximately half of them have jobs, and another 50,000 are taking part in apprenticeship programs. The federal education minister has stated that more than 10,000 are enrolled in university. Three quarters of them now live in their own apartment or house and feel “welcome” or “very welcome” in Germany. The financial cost to the German government of taking in the migrants—including housing, food, and education—is likely to be recovered, in taxes, earlier than many had predicted.

Riaz Haq said…
The terrorism concerns proved to be massively overblown, and allows us by the French think tank Fondapol found that since 2015, Germany has experienced only a fraction of the Islamic terror attacks that France has. While taking in far more migrants.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2105/09/fzgps.01.html

ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. On Tuesday, Germany's interior minister made a disturbing announcement for right crime in his country hit a record high last year with more than 23,000 incidents. A university have also study of far right terror attacks in Europe shows that over the past 30 years, Germany has had the most far right terrorist incidents on the continent by far.


In the most troubling recent incident near Frankfurt, a far right gunman killed 10 people in two shisha bars last February. Politically motivated crimes like that one were up and alarming 10.8 percent with national elections just four months away, authorities wanted to particularly unstable time. They're worried that far right groups will use frustration with repeated lockdowns and a botched vaccine rollout to stir up resentment toward the government and encouraged sedition.

All this comes at a time of major political transition. After 15 years of Angela Merkel steadying influence at the helm, Germany will be electing a new chancellor come September.

The record breaking year the Germany just experienced as the latest in a years long upward trend. And that trend is made even more striking by the fact that it seems to have emerged in reaction to an imaginary crisis.

Official data shows that far right crimes saw the first major spike in 2015. The year Merkel decided to open her country's borders to a large number of migrants, many fleeing war torn Syria. Eventually over 1.2 million people amounting to 1.5 percent of the German population were allowed to settle in the country under that policy.

And that fueled intense anxieties about how out of control immigration could lead to integration problems and Islamist terrorism.

Before the far right fears about impending Sharia doom, today most of those 1.2 million refugees have already assimilated nicely into German society. As Thomas Rogers wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, the migrants from that period have integrated faster than previous refugee influxes.

Approximately half of them have jobs and another 50,000 are taking part in apprenticeship programs. The federal education minister has stated then more than 10,000 are enrolled in university. Three quarters of them now live in their own apartment or house and feel welcome or very welcome in Germany.

In the German institutions and German society have both been quite welcoming.

[10:55:01]

As Rogers writes, German companies created purpose built jobs for the newcomers. And over half of Germans say they have volunteered or donated in some capacity to help the migrants make a new home in their country.

The terrorism concerns proved to be massively overblown, and allows us by the French think tank Fondapol found that since 2015, Germany has experienced only a fraction of the Islamic terror attacks that France has. While taking in far more migrants.

The German public seems to have noticed. Polls showed that the biggest rivals to Merkel's political errs will be the pro-immigrant, pro- asylum Green Party, while the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party is at the back of the pack.

Let's hope the Germans realized that while they were constantly warned about Islamist terror, the violence that actually materialized came from the far right, and is still on the rise even now.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.


https://youtu.be/dNVh7qWH5g0
Riaz Haq said…
They shared a video of a #Muslim man being attacked in #India. Now they're being investigated by police. #Indian police opened an investigation into 3 Muslim journalists & 3 Muslim members of the opposition Congress party who had shared the video.#Hindutva https://ti.me/3gwnLhy


Indian authorities have launched a fresh attack on freedom of expression, escalating a crackdown on press freedom and social media platforms. It’s yet another indicator that India, often called the world’s largest democracy, is lurching toward authoritarianism.

The trigger was a video of a violent assault on a Muslim man that went viral on Twitter, which ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) officials say was used to spread misinformation aimed at stoking religious tensions.

Late Tuesday night, Indian police opened an investigation into three Muslim journalists and three Muslim members of the opposition Congress party who had shared the video, along with Twitter and news site The Wire—one of the few media outlets in India that have remained independent.

India’s IT Minister also accused Twitter of failing to comply with the government’s new Internet rules on Wednesday, intensifying an ongoing confrontation that some observers have speculated could culminate in the social media platform being banned in the country.

The video in question showed a group of men attacking an elderly Muslim man in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The individuals named in the police investigation had shared comments from the victim, who said that his attackers had cut off his beard and forced him to chant “Jai Shri Ram” (Glory to Lord Ram), an expression that has become a rallying cry for Hindu nationalists, in a suggestion that the attack was religiously motivated. Many mainstream Indian media organizations also reported the victim’s comments but were not named in the investigation.

Police investigating the case denied that the incident was motivated by religion, saying Tuesday that some of the attackers were Muslim. In a statement announcing the investigation, police said that those named had “tried to create animosity between Hindus and Muslims,” and “did not make an attempt to establish the truth in the case,” adding that they had spread “false news.” Police said the six individuals would be investigated for several possible offenses including attempting to provoke a riot, promoting enmity between religious groups, public mischief, and criminal conspiracy.

The move has been heavily criticized by journalists and free speech organizations. “The accusation brought by the Uttar Pradesh police is based on absolutely no tangible element and clearly amounts to judicial harassment,” said Reporters Without Borders in a statement on Thursday. “Reporters Without Borders calls on the police of northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state to immediately withdraw the absurd charges.”

The Uttar Pradesh state government had not responded to a TIME request for comment at the time of publication.

Intimidation of journalists
One of the journalists named in the police investigation was TIME and Washington Post contributor Rana Ayyub, an award-winning journalist who recently reported from overstretched Indian hospitals for a TIME story arguing that governmental failures were to blame for the country’s devastating second wave of COVID-19. Others include Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-checking website AltNews, which regularly debunks misinformation shared by the government and its supporters, and Saba Naqvi, an author and journalist. The other three people named were members of the opposition Congress party.

In an interview with TIME, Ayyub said that, while the victim’s comments that the attack was religiously motivated had been reported by many newspapers across the country, she believed police had targeted her and other prominent Muslims in order to intimidate them. “It shames the Indian government that they are targeting journalists for reporting basic facts,” Ayyub says.

Riaz Haq said…
Welham Boys' School Officials Booked for Seeking #Halal #Meat Suppliers. Welham is a prominent school in Dehradun #India. Complaint was filed by #BJP-allied Bajrang Dal's convener Vikas Verma for 'promoting enmity between groups'. #Hindutva #Islamophobia https://www.thequint.com/news/india/dehradun-welham-boys-school-booked-for-halal-meat-ad

Authorities of the Welham Boys' School, a prominent school in Dehradun, were booked on Friday, 3 July, for 'inviting halal meat suppliers for the mess'.

The complaint was filed by Bajrang Dal's convener Vikas Verma for 'promoting enmity between groups', reported The Times of India. The principal, vice principal and the manager of the residential school have been booked under Section 505 (2) of the Indian Penal Code which pertains to statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes.

"The school has issued a tender for serving halal meat in the school canteen with the intention of religious conversion of students. Due to this act, the religious sentiments of Hindu community have been hurt," the complaint read, reported the Times of India.
Riaz Haq said…
Pew Research: Islamophobia in America has doubled from 25% to 50% in the last 20 years

Islamophobia among Republicans is up from 32% to 72% in last two decades.

Among Democrats, Islamophobia has risen from 23% to 32% in this period.


Ishaan Tharoor tweeted: Am I reading this right — that, six months after 9/11, fewer Americans believed Islam encourages more violence than other religions than they do now? https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/02/two-decades-later-the-enduring-legacy-of-9-11/

https://twitter.com/ishaantharoor/status/1435238567832399875?s=20


Views of Muslims, Islam grew more partisan in years after 9/11
Concerned about a possible backlash against Muslims in the U.S. in the days after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush gave a speech to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in which he declared: “Islam is peace.” For a brief period, a large segment of Americans agreed. In November 2001, 59% of U.S. adults had a favorable view of Muslim Americans, up from 45% in March 2001, with comparable majorities of Democrats and Republicans expressing a favorable opinion.

Chart shows Republicans increasingly say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence
This spirit of unity and comity was not to last. In a September 2001 survey, 28% of adults said they had grown more suspicious of people of Middle Eastern descent; that grew to 36% less than a year later.

Republicans, in particular, increasingly came to associate Muslims and Islam with violence. In 2002, just a quarter of Americans – including 32% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats – said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. About twice as many (51%) said it was not.

But within the next few years, most Republicans and GOP leaners said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence. Today, 72% of Republicans express this view, according to an August 2021 survey.

Democrats consistently have been far less likely than Republicans to associate Islam with violence. In the Center’s latest survey, 32% of Democrats say this. Still, Democrats are somewhat more likely to say this today than they have been in recent years: In 2019, 28% of Democrats said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers than other religions.

The partisan gap in views of Muslims and Islam in the U.S. is evident in other meaningful ways. For example, a 2017 survey found that half of U.S. adults said that “Islam is not part of mainstream American society” – a view held by nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) but only 37% of Democrats. In a separate survey conducted in 2017, 56% of Republicans said there was a great deal or fair amount of extremism among U.S. Muslims, with fewer than half as many Democrats (22%) saying the same.

The rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 has had a profound effect on the growing number of Muslims living in the United States. Surveys of U.S. Muslims from 2007-2017 found increasing shares saying they have personally experienced discrimination and received public expression of support.
Riaz Haq said…
How 9/11 still impacts Muslims in America

https://www.fox4now.com/news/local-news/how-9-11-still-impacts-muslims-in-america

The latest PEW research data shows there are more than 3.5 million Muslims living in America today, and that number continues to grow. PEW estimates that by 2050 the U.S. Muslim population will make up more than 2% of the nation's total population. But after the 9/11 attacks, Muslims started facing more discrimination because of their faith.

The FBI's uniform crime reporting website shows that anti-Islamic hate crimes rose from 28 incidents in the year 2000 to 481 in 2001. That's a 1,617% increase in just one year. 20 years later, those numbers are still high. In 2019, anti-Islamic hate crimes made up 13.3% of all religion-based attacks in the U.S.

If you want to learn more about the religion and culture of Islam in our country, you can visit alislam.org or the Muslim American society's website. The 9/11 memorial site also gives you more information on how the Muslim community was impacted by the events of that day, and how the community responded.

Riaz Haq said…
Is #India Headed for an Anti-Muslim Genocide? #Modi's #BJP's narrative dehumanizes #Muslims. As Jews in #Nazi #Germany were called “rats” and Tutsis in Rwanda in the 1990s were called “cockroaches,” so BJP members now refer to Indian Muslims as “termites”. https://time.com/6103284/india-hindu-supremacy-extremism-genocide-bjp-modi/
Riaz Haq said…
#France’s Old Bigotry Finds a New Face. Éric Zemmour, a far-right polemicist who officially declared on Tuesday that he is running in next presidential election, is the loudest and most extreme voice of #French #racism today. #Islamophobia #colonialism https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/opinion/eric-zemmour-france-jews.html?smid=tw-share

France is the home of “Liberté, Égalité et Fraternité” and the birthplace of the Rights of Man. But running simultaneously through the country’s political traditions is a much darker strain of racism and antisemitism. It looks as if a new, more virulent chapter in that history of French bigotry may now be opening — with a seemingly unlikely champion.

Éric Zemmour, a far-right polemicist who officially declared on Tuesday that he is running in next April’s presidential election, is the loudest and most extreme voice of French racism today. While his poll numbers have started to slide from their highs earlier this fall, Mr. Zemmour’s divisive campaign has resonated with a significant portion of voters and he is still among the leading candidates. He is capturing national headlines and unleashing vicious bigotry into the mainstream in a way unseen in years.

The great irony is that Mr. Zemmour, twice convicted of inciting racial hatred and discrimination, is a Jew — a member of the very community once targeted by the racists whose traditions he inherits and invokes. He has updated France’s oldest hatred for a new era.

The roots of the current French far right can be understood only in the context of its prehistory.

Religious antisemitism was long a staple of reactionary thought in France. In the 19th century, that turned into economic and political antisemitism, taking its definitive form around the time of the Dreyfus Affair, the scandal involving the Jewish military officer, Alfred Dreyfus, who was falsely accused and convicted of passing secrets to Germany. The battle between Dreyfus’s supporters and his accusers came to define French politics. The period brought with it the appearance of antisemitic newspapers like “La Libre Parole,” whose masthead featured the slogan “France for the French,” still a favorite of the French right. This movement lived on well into the 20th century. Its final chapter was the Nazi-aligned Vichy government and French participation in the roundup of Jews for deportation and murder.

After the Holocaust, antisemitism was no longer viable as a political movement — though it was never entirely expunged from society. With the advent of mass immigration from France’s former colonies, antisemitism was largely replaced by anti-Black and, especially, anti-Arab racism. Since the 1970s, the political voice of this racism has been the far-right National Front party, now rebranded as the National Rally as part of an attempt to enter the mainstream. This party has twice reached the second round of the presidential elections, in 2002 and 2017. Mr. Zemmour is now outflanking it from the right.

It doesn’t take much to see the roots of Mr. Zemmour’s ideology: his insistence that France is engaged in a religious war with Islam and a race war with its Black and Arab population; that entire neighborhoods of its major cities have been “colonized” by Muslims; that Islam is a religion of terror; that French Muslims must be made to choose between Islam and France (which he considers mutually exclusive). All of it is an updating of the Jew-hatred of a century and a quarter ago.

Riaz Haq said…
Juan E Mendez, the first #UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, on the #genocide call against #India’s #Muslims: ‘UNSC should step in to protect Indian minorities’ #Islamophobia #Hindutva #Modi https://aje.io/mv3b8t via @AJEnglish

Dozens of Hindu religious leaders and politicians gathered last month for a meeting in Haridwar, a prominent pilgrimage site for Hindus in the northern Uttarakhand state, where multiple speakers called on the community to arm themselves for a genocide against the Muslim minority.

“Even if just 100 of us become soldiers and kill two million of them, we will be victorious,” Sadhvi Annapurna Maa of the far-right Hindu Mahasabha (Grand Assembly of Hindus) told a cheering crowd at the event.

The videos of the meeting went viral on social media, sparking outrage and prompting calls for the arrest of those who openly called for the killings. In the month since, two speakers have been arrested while others roam free as the police say they are investigating the matter.

Meanwhile, experts have raised an alarm. During a congressional briefing in the United States, Professor Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, warned in unambiguous words that a “genocide could very well happen in India”.


In August last year, Stanton, who has modelled 10 Stages of Genocide, put India on the 8th stage, i.e. persecution of a community. The remaining two stages are extermination and denial.

Juan E Mendez is the first United Nations Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide (2004-2007), appointed by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He also served as the president and commissioner of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and as the UN Special Rapporteur on torture. Currently, he is a professor of human rights law at the American University in Washington, DC.

Mendez has termed the situation in India, home to 200 million Muslims, “dangerous” and “deeply disturbing”. Al Jazeera spoke to him about the explicit calls for genocide against the minority and what the international community, including the UN, can do to prevent it.


Juan E Mendez: I see them with a lot of concern, especially in the context where there have been decades of hostility towards the minority communities. The calls for active violence are much more dangerous and part of the equation, and particularly in this context, it could lead to some people taking those calls seriously, acting on them, and provoking others, too.

In this case, I would look for the worse, which is noting that these speeches were made by non-state actors, i.e. people who claim to represent their ethnic group, who act as if it is protected speech and under freedom of expression, like if it was just an opinion.

After all, making calls for killing millions in any legal context is a crime, the crime of threats at the very least. And so, if there is no appropriate response to it by the government, then I think the international community needs to demand action to limit the possible effects of speech of that sort.
Riaz Haq said…
Expert warns of impending ‘genocide’ of Muslims in India

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/16/expert-warns-of-possible-genocide-against-muslims-in-india

Stanton said genocide was not an event but a process and drew parallels between the policies pursued by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the discriminatory policies of Myanmar’s government against Rohingya Muslims in 2017.

Among the policies he cited were the revocation of the special autonomous status of Indian-administered Kashmir in 2019 – which stripped Kashmiris of the special autonomy they had for seven decades – and the Citizenship Amendment Act the same year, which granted citizenship to religious minorities but excluded Muslims.

Stanton, a former lecturer in genocide studies and prevention at the George Mason University in Virginia, said he feared a similar scenario to Myanmar, where the Rohingya were first legally declared non-citizens and then expelled through violence and genocide.

“What we are now facing is a very similar kind of a plot,” he said.
Riaz Haq said…
Religious Divide in #Bangalore #Karnataka will destroy #India's #tech industry, says #Indian corporate leader Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. She was referring to reports of #Muslim vendors being kept out of temple towns and festivals. #BJP #Hindutva #Islamophobia https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/biocon-chief-kiran-mazumdar-shaw-calls-out-growing-religious-divide-in-karnataka

Bengaluru: A prominent voice from the corporate sector and executive chairperson of Biocon Ltd, Dr Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, has raised a red flag over the “growing religious divide” in Karnataka and expressed fear that it may affect the IT-BT sector too.

In a series of tweets, she raised a red flag over hardline Hindutva groups to keep out Muslim traders from temple festivals in Karnataka and urged Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to resolve the “growing religious divide” in the state and warned that the country’s “global leadership” in tech and biotech was at stake.

“Karnataka has always forged inclusive economic development and we must not allow such communal exclusion — if IT/BT became communal it would destroy our global leadership,” wrote Shaw, who heads Asia’s leading biopharmaceuticals enterprise,” she tweeted, tagging Bommai and added: “Please resolve this growing religious divide.”

In a subsequent tweet, she posted: “Our CM is a very progressive leader. I am sure he will resolve this issue soon.”

She was referring to reports on how Muslim vendors were being kept out of several temple towns and festivals. Several temple committees organising the festivals, especially in the communally sensitive coastal districts, have been obeying the warning issued by the hardline Hindu groups. Some, however, have expressed dismay over the curbs and say these would hit long-standing social relations. The curbs came after Muslim groups organised a bandh against the hijab ban ruling by the Karnataka High Court.

However, the state government, in an official statement in the state legislature, said the restrictions on non-Hindus conducting business within the premises of temples is as per a rule introduced in 2002 under the Karnataka Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments Act, 1997. This rule, many vendors say, has now been weaponised to keep them out of business.

Riaz Haq said…
Why #Christians are trying to cancel ‘Ms. Marvel’? Why are they upset about a young #Muslim girl when a Norse God had four movies and appeared in every Avengers film? #Pakistani-#American #MsMarvel #Islamophobia https://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/why-christians-are-trying-to-cancel-ms-marvel/


Phase Four of the Disney MCU has introduced us to new and diverse characters from different backgrounds. But it seems that Christian groups are against the new Ms. Marvel show for *checks notes* being Muslim.

TikTok user frankdomenic has noticed that the new Disney Plus show is being review bombed on IMDb. As of writing, the show currently has an average rating of 6.4 out of 10 stars on the website. This TikToker theorized that the show would have received a higher rating if it wasn’t being bombed by “racists”.

The TikToker theorized that the cause of the review bomb was because of a private Facebook group called “Christians Against Ms. Marvel”. According to their about page, this group believes that Ms. Marvel is “the biggest slap in the face” for conservative Christians and that Carol Danvers should be the face of the show. Their goal is to get the show canceled as they believe that there will no longer be more “white straight Christian characters”.

Ms Marvel might be the biggest slap in the face for conservative Christians to date!!! Disney has decided that the face of this franchise should not be Carol Danvers but should instead be a gay Muslim. no more straight Christian characters from Marvel. those days are over. please join us as we let Disney know that we will not BE CANCELLED!!!

It seems like these people have not seen or read Ms. Marvel as the show clearly dictates that Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel are two different characters. Even the show indicates that Kamala Khan looks up to Carol Danvers. These “Christians” should be flattered. Also, Kamala Khan is not (at least not yet confirmed) to be a gay character. Just because a pride shirt appeared in the show doesn’t mean she’s automatically gay.

Also, why are they upset about a young Muslim girl when a Norse God had four movies and appeared in every Avengers film? If these are truly “conservative” Christians, shouldn’t they be up in arms against that too, especially if they remember the first commandment? One TikToker noticed this and FrankDomenic gave a possible reason as to why Thor gets a pass.

MCU fans mocked the Facebook group after the page was shared on social media. Some believed it was just a troll page while others, especially Christians, said that they enjoyed the show.

So far, more people praised the show than the ones who gave negative ratings. And hopefully, by episode 2, more people will appreciate the show. Also, it’s 2022 guys, let others be represented on the big screen.

Episode 1 of Ms. Marvel is now out on Disney Plus and new episodes come out each week on Wednesday.
Riaz Haq said…
#Meta execs told #HumanRights groups they wouldn’t release full #India #HateSpeech study for their own security. An earlier 2020 study concluded that #Hindutva groups support violence against #Muslims, #minorities & should be banned from #Facebook https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-officials-cite-security-concerns-for-failing-to-release-details-of-india-hate-speech-study-11664370857?st=h010tutay1jsf5g via @WSJ

Executives at Meta Platforms Inc. META 5.36%▲ privately told rights groups that security concerns prevented them from releasing details of its investigation into hate speech on its services in India, according to audio recordings heard by The Wall Street Journal.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, in July released a four-page summary of a human-rights impact assessment on India, its biggest market by users, where it has faced accusations of failing to adequately police hate speech against religious minorities. The India summary was part of the company’s first global human-rights report. The 83-page global report offers detailed findings of some previous investigations; it included only general descriptions of its India assessment, which disappointed some rights advocates.

“This is not the report that the human-rights team at Meta wanted to publish, we wanted to be able to publish more,” Iain Levine, a Meta senior human-rights adviser, said during private online briefings with rights groups in late July after the summary was released, according to the recordings.

“A decision was made at the highest levels of the company based upon both internal and external advice that it was not possible to do so for security reasons,” he said.

The company said at the time of the report’s release that it wouldn’t publish the full India assessment. It also said United Nations guidelines for companies reporting on human-rights issues caution against releasing details that could imperil stakeholders, a term that generally refers to people such as staff and external researchers involved in the reporting process.

Representatives from the rights groups contended in their meeting with Meta executives that the company wasn’t being transparent in its human-rights efforts, that it appeared not to take the undertaking seriously and that the groups had participated in good faith only to see Meta bury the findings, according to the recordings.

The fact that Meta isn’t releasing the full assessment is “a slap in my face and my people’s face who have endured so much hate speech on this platform,” said a person in the briefing who identified herself as an Indian Muslim researcher, according to the recordings. “We want a release of this report—now,” she said.

Mr. Levine and Miranda Sissons, Meta’s human-rights director, said they understood those complaints and wished they had been able to release more details, according to the recordings.

The executives said during the briefings that the effort represented an important first step in Meta addressing human-rights concerns. They said the summary was written after consulting the guidance on human-rights impact assessments for digital companies from the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

“This is the beginning of a reporting process where I think no activist, no human-rights defender of any kind would ever think that any of the work any company, or probably any entity, that is done is good enough and this team would agree,” Ms. Sissons said in one briefing, the recordings show.

Mr. Levine, who worked for more than three decades for global human-rights groups before joining Meta in 2020, told attendees of the briefings that 120 people at Meta reviewed the report, and that it was approved by president of global affairs Nick Clegg and chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead.

Riaz Haq said…
India’s government is exporting its #Hindu nationalism. Example: #Leicester in #UK. #Modi paints India as a kind of Hindu Zion. #Islamophobia is rampant among bjp stalwarts. Authorities have bulldozed Muslim homes in #Delhi & #BJP ruled states. #Hindutva https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/09/29/indias-government-is-exporting-its-hindu-nationalism

The violence that erupted two weeks ago between Muslims and Hindus in the English city of Leicester, home to a large population of Britons with South Asian ancestry, appears at last to be dying down as police flood the streets. It began with brawls and quickly escalated into attacks on mosques and temples.

Events in faraway Leicester bear on Banyan’s Asian preoccupations, largely because of the reaction of the government of India. Its high commission in London condemned the “violence perpetrated against the Indian community in Leicester and vandalisation of premises and symbols of [the] Hindu religion”, but, pointedly, did not condemn Hindus’ violence against Muslims.

Admittedly, Pakistan decried a “systematic campaign” of violence and intimidation against Muslims. But then Pakistan, a state founded on putting Islam (and by extension communalism) at its core, would look after its own, wouldn’t it? The Indian state, by contrast, long sought to represent a secular ideal that rose above communal divisions.

That ideal also informed the internationalist, inclusionary rhetoric of India’s foreign policy. The notable omissions in the Indian High Commission’s statement are indicative of a break in policy since the rise to power in 2014 of Narendra Modi, the prime minister. He is cheerleader-in-chief for Hindutva, a strident form of Hindu nativism promoted by his Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp).

The Indian government’s response was notable in another respect. Most of Leicester’s South Asian Muslims have their ancestral roots not in Pakistan but, like its Hindus, within the borders of India itself. Mukul Kesavan, an Indian writer, writes that to identify only with its Hindus “is to withdraw...the ancestral claim to India from the Muslims of Leicester.”

This is all of a piece with the bjp’s majoritarian approach at home, where Hindus constitute four-fifths of the country’s 1.4bn people and Muslims about one-seventh. Islamophobia is rampant among bjp stalwarts (though Mr Modi usually carries a dog whistle). When Hindus and Muslims have clashed in Delhi or in bjp-ruled states, authorities have bulldozed Muslim homes in retribution. Mr Modi’s Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 grants Indian citizenship to refugees from neighbouring countries—so long as they are not Muslim.

As Mr Kesavan argues, standing up for Hindus abroad bolsters Mr Modi’s standing among Hindus at home. Mr Modi has long understood this aspect of personal power. Before the pandemic he staged huge rallies for the Indian diaspora in America and Britain. On visits abroad he pointedly combines diplomacy with prayer. Mr Modi paints India as a kind of Hindu Zion.


In the American capital this week the foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, lambasted those supposedly spreading false views of India, such as the Washington Post. He defended the government’s suspension of the rule of law and the internet in majority-Muslim Kashmir as motivated only by pure intentions. The minister is representative of Hindutva at the heart of the foreign-policy establishment. A paper in International Affairs, an academic journal, by Kira Huju of Oxford University describes how Indian diplomats hewing to the secular, internationalist line have been squeezed out, silenced or marginalised in favour of hardline hacks. Not only that, diplomats abroad must now promote a Hindu-inflected alternative medicine known as Ayurveda, as well as take instruction in the promotion and practice of yoga.
Riaz Haq said…
Islam is the second largest religion in America

Buddhism, Islam and Judaism have the most followers after Christianity in most of states.

By Reid Wilson

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/06/04/the-second-largest-religion-in-each-state/


In 20 states, mostly in the Midwest and South, Islam is the largest non-Christian faith tradition. And in 15 states, mostly in the Northeast, Judaism has the most followers after Christianity. Hindus come in second place in Arizona and Delaware, and there are more practitioners of the Baha’i faith in South Carolina than anyone else.


Christianity is by far the largest religion in the United States; more than three-quarters of Americans identify as Christians. A little more than half of us identify as Protestants, about 23 percent as Catholic and about 2 percent as Mormon.

But what about the rest of us? In the Western U.S., Buddhists represent the largest non-Christian religious bloc in most states. In 20 states, mostly in the Midwest and South, Islam is the largest non-Christian faith tradition. And in 15 states, mostly in the Northeast, Judaism has the most followers after Christianity. Hindus come in second place in Arizona and Delaware, and there are more practitioners of the Baha’i faith in South Carolina than anyone else.


All these data come from the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, which conducts a U.S. Religion Census every 10 years.

The data the ASARB release every 10 years are revealing: Adherents to any religious faith — that is, those who actually attend religious services — make up more than half the population in 28 states. Utah has the highest percentage of adherents, at 79 percent of the population, while just over a quarter of Mainers are adherents. North Dakota, Alabama and Louisiana are near the top of the list, while Oregon, Vermont, Alaska, Nevada and Washington sit near the bottom of the rankings.


Catholicism dominates the Northeast and the Southwest, and Southern Baptists have a strong foothold in the South. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominates Utah and surrounding counties in Idaho, Wyoming and parts of Nevada. Lutheranism has a strong following in Minnesota and the Dakotas, while Methodists make their presence felt in parts of West Virginia, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Riaz Haq said…
ANI
@ANI
#WATCH | It's said there's a lot of discussion on Jihad in Islam... Even after all efforts, if someone doesn't understand clean idea, power can be used, it's mentioned in Quran & Gita... Shri Krishna taught lessons of Jihad to Arjun in a part of Gita in Mahabharat: S Patil, ex-HM

https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1583132551056457735?s=20&t=BUqdkBb_-4-xkSKBG5PdYg

-------------------------


S. Patil in the tweeted video: "Krishna said he has come here not to establish peace, he has come with a sword"
Riaz Haq said…
In the U.S. and Western Europe, people say they accept Muslims, but opinions are divided on Islam
BY NEHA SAHGAL AND BESHEER MOHAMED

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/08/in-the-u-s-and-western-europe-people-say-they-accept-muslims-but-opinions-are-divided-on-islam/

The vast majority of people across 15 countries in Western Europe and in the United States say they would be willing to accept Muslims as neighbors. Slightly lower shares on both sides of the Atlantic say they would be willing to accept a Muslim as a family member.


At the same time, there is no consensus on whether Islam fits into these societies. Across Western Europe, people are split on Islam’s compatibility with their country’s culture and values, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey. And in the U.S., public opinion remains about evenly divided on whether Islam is part of mainstream American society and if Islam is compatible with democracy, according to a 2017 poll.

The vast majority of non-Muslim Americans (89%) say they would be willing to accept Muslims as neighbors, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The same survey finds that most people (79%) say they would be willing to accept Muslims as members of their family.


In Western Europe, most people also say they would be willing to accept Muslim neighbors. However, Europeans are less likely than Americans to say they would be willing to accept Muslims as family members. While about two-thirds of non-Muslim French people (66%) say they would accept a Muslim in their family, just over half of British (53%), Austrian (54%) and German (55%) adults say this. Italians are the least likely in Europe to say they would be willing to accept a Muslim family member (43%).

Surveys in both the U.S. and Western Europe were conducted on the telephone, and due to the tendency of some respondents to give socially acceptable responses, may overstate the share of people willing to accept others (also known as social desirability bias).

In both the U.S. and Europe, the surveys find higher acceptance of Muslims among those with more education. In the U.S., for example, 86% of adults with a college degree would be willing to accept a Muslim into their family; among Americans without a college degree, this share falls to 75%. Similarly, in Germany, a majority of those with a college education (67%) say they would be willing to accept a Muslim in their family, compared with roughly half (52%) among those without one. The same pattern is present in other countries, such as the UK (71% vs. 44%) and Austria (67% vs. 51%).

On both sides of the Atlantic, attitudes toward Muslims are tied to politics, even after taking education, age and other demographic factors into account. In Western Europe, those who lean toward the right of the European political spectrum have less accepting views than those who lean toward the left. Likewise, in the U.S., those who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say they would be willing to accept a Muslim family member (88% vs. 67%). Still, majorities among both Democrats and Republicans say they would be willing to accept Muslims in their lives. Additional analysis of how other demographic factors (such as religion) are correlated with these kinds of attitudes in Europe can be found here.

Riaz Haq said…
American Muslims elected in Nov 2022

https://www.pakistanlink.org/Community/2022/Nov22/11/02.HTM

Abdelnasser Rashid and Nabeela Syed are projected to win the elections to represent State House District 21 and State House District 51, respectively. They would be the first Muslims elected to the Illinois State Legislature.

If Nabilah Islam prevails, she would represent State Senate District 7 in Georgia. On the State House side, Ruwa Romman is the projected winner to represent District 97. Islam would be the first Muslim woman elected to the State Senate while Romman would be the first Muslim woman elected to the State House of Representatives.

Munira Abdullahi does not have a challenger in the general election for State House District 9 in Ohio, and has become the first Muslim elected to the Ohio State Legislature. Ismail Mohammad, a Democrat running for State House District 3 would join her if he wins.

Democrat Mana Abdi made history when she was elected to represent State House District 95 in Maine. If South Portland Mayor Deqa Dhalac prevails in the State House District 120 race, she could join Abdi.

Former Euless City Councilor Salman Bhojani, a Democrat, is running for Texas House District 92 and is projected to win. He would be the first Muslim elected to the Texas State Legislature should he prevail and could be joined by Suleman Lalani, who is leading the race to represent State House District 76.

This midterm election had 145 Muslim candidates running for local, state and federal office in the general election, including 48 state legislative candidates running in 23 states. Not all races have a clear winner yet. According to Jetpac, currently, 29 Muslim state legislators serve in 18 states.

“Tonight’s historic string of record-breaking American Muslim electoral victories is a testament to our community’s ongoing rise in American politics and the trust our neighbors have placed in us to represent them and fight for their interests," CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said.

"We are witnessing the next step in the American Muslim community’s political transformation from marginalized voices that were sidelined, or worse, to decision-makers. These newly elected officials are building upon the success of our community’s decades-long investment in civic engagement, voter registration and running for office." – Middle East Eye

Riaz Haq said…
Qatar hosting the World Cup highlights Western double standards
Is this truly about human rights, or is it that Western pundits can’t stomach the idea that an Arab Middle East country will host the World Cup?

by Ayman Mohyeldin

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna57891

From the moment Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 World Cup, there have been criticisms surrounding its capacity and deservedness to hold the event. And rightfully so; any country that plans to welcome people from around the world for a globally important affair should be subject to intense scrutiny.

But what has played out over the past several years, and intensified in the final few months before the World Cup’s Sunday premiere, reveals the depths of Western prejudice, performative moral outrage and, perhaps most significantly, gross double standards.

A barrage of negative and quite frankly racist commentary about the tiny Persian Gulf nation has included headlines suggesting that fans who were celebrating the buildup to the tournament were paid to appear, because they were South Asians. A French outlet published a cartoon depicting the Qatari national team as terrorists. The list goes on.

But is this debate truly about migrant workers’ rights and human rights, or is it that European countries and Western pundits, who view themselves as the traditional gatekeepers of global soccer, can’t stomach the idea that an Arab Middle Eastern country will host such a venerable event?

-------------


Piers Morgan
@piersmorgan
Yes, and we tortured innocent Iraqi civilians when we illegally invaded that country. Britain’s in no position to play the moral superiority card vs Qatar.

https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1594274105309945856?s=20&t=BrrB8MI5SIpGWwWjEydpFg

------------

#Fifa President Gianni Infantino:"I am European. For what we have been doing for 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before giving moral lessons" #soccer #football #Colonialism #slavery #Qatar #alcoholban https://www.npr.org/2022/11/19/1137962269/fifa-president-gianni-infantino-qatar-world-cup-hypocrisy

DOHA, Qatar — FIFA president Gianni Infantino used his opening press conference before the start of the monthlong World Cup to deliver a blistering tirade at the West for continued criticism of host country Qatar and its human rights record.

For an hour, Infantino lectured the international press assembled at the Qatar National Convention Centre and then took questions for 45 minutes. In lengthy, and at times angry remarks, Infantino blasted the criticism of Qatar and FIFA.

"I am European. For what we have been doing for 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before giving moral lessons," he said.

He furthered the defense by saying, "Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker."

Infantino said he has difficulties understanding the criticism and called it hypocrisy. "We have to invest in helping these people, in education and to give them a better future and more hope. We should all educate ourselves, many things are not perfect, but reform and change takes time."

Since FIFA chose Qatar to stage this tournament in 2010, soccer's governing body and the host country have endured withering criticism. It's the first time a Middle Eastern country has hosted a World Cup. A report released this month from the London-based rights group Equidem said the migrant laborers who built the World Cup stadiums worked long hours and under harsh conditions. The report said they were subjected to discrimination, wage theft and other abuses.

Infantino's news conference comes a day after FIFA and Qatar announced that the sale of beer would be banned at the eight stadiums. FIFA said the decision would ensure "the stadiums and surrounding areas provide an enjoyable, respectful and pleasant experience for all fans."
Riaz Haq said…
Indian culture and civilization have been enriched by Muslims. The biggest draw of tourists to India is the Taj Mahal built by a Muslim king. The Red Fort where Modi stands every year to deliver Independence Day speech was built by Muslims. Indian musical instruments like sitar and tabla were developed by Muslims. Choli and lehenga worn by Indian women were brought to India by Muslims. Biryani, samosa and nan came to India with Muslims. Indian language has been enriched by Arabic and Farsi words added by Muslims. Even the words Hindi and Hindu are of Arabic/Persian origin.

Now Hindutva rulers are trying to erase Muslim history in India. They can not succeed.

Muslims have given the world algebra, calculus, scientific method, physics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, social sciences and a whole lot more.

Watch Prof Roy Casagranda explain it in detail in the following video:

https://youtu.be/C8M4i9fvq1M
Riaz Haq said…
Tweet from Ashok Swain:

“Hindu supremacists in India are openly praising Hitler - Claiming that Hitler was considering Hindus superior than Germans and sending German women to India to get babies with Hindus so they could be brave & strong! In which world, are these bigot living?”


https://twitter.com/ashoswai/status/1604467216023695360?s=61&t=q2TcOa3zJV6Ys1npwRU5fg
Riaz Haq said…
Three decades ago, the razing by a Hindu mob of a 16th-century mosque in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, which Hindus believe is the birthplace of the god Ram, led to the death of 2,000 people and propelled the rise of Mr. Modi’s party.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/world/asia/india-ukraine-russia.html

A temple is now being built there. Mr. Modi, who presided over the groundbreaking in 2020, has called it “the modern symbol of our traditions.”

Faced by such moves, Ms. Roy, the novelist, voiced a common concern. “You know, the Varanasi sari, worn by Hindus, woven by Muslims, was a symbol of everything that was so interwoven and is now being ripped apart,” she said. “A threat of violence hangs over the city.”

I found Syed Mohammed Yaseen, a leader of the Varanasi Muslim community, which makes up close to a third of the city’s population of roughly 1.2 million, at his timber store. “The situation is not good,” Mr. Yaseen, 75, said. “We are dealing with 18 lawsuits relating to the old mosque. The Hindus want to demolish it indirectly by starting their own worship there.” Increasingly, he said, Muslims felt like second-class citizens.

“Every day, we are feeling all kinds of attacks, and our identity is being diminished,” he said. “India’s secular character is being dented. It still exists in our Constitution, but in practice, it is dented, and the government is silent.”

This denting has taken several forms under Mr. Modi. Shashi Tharoor, a leading member of the opposition Congress Party that ruled India for most of the time since independence, suggested to me that “institutionalized bigotry” had taken hold.

A number of lynchings and demolitions of Muslim homes, the imprisonment of Muslim and other journalists critical of Mr. Modi, and the emasculation of independent courts have fanned fears of what Mr. Raghavan, the historian, called “a truly discriminatory regime, with its risk of radicalization.”

--------------

With inequality worsening, food security worsening, energy security worsening, and climate change accelerating, more countries are asking what answers the post-1945 Western-dominated order can provide. India, it seems, believes it can be a broker, bridging East-West and North-South divisions.

----------

At the end of my stay, I traveled down to Chennai on the southeastern coast.

The atmosphere is softer there. The economy is booming. The electronics manufacturer Foxconn is rapidly expanding production capacity for Apple devices, building a hostel for 60,000 workers on a 20-acre site near the city.

“The great mass of Indians are awakening to the fact that they don’t need the ideology of the West and that we can set our own path — and Modi deserves credit for that,” Venky Naik, a retired businessman, said.

I went to a concert where a musician played haunting songs and spoke of “renewing your auspiciousness every day.” There I ran into Mukund Padmanabhan, a former editor of The Hindu newspaper and now a professor of public practice at the newly established Krea University, north of Chennai.

“I do not believe Modi can marshal Hinduism into a monolithic nationalist force,” he said. “There are thousands of Gods, and you don’t have to believe in any of them. There is no single or unique way.”

He gestured toward the mixed crowd of Hindus and Muslims at the concert. “People don’t like to talk about the project of Gandhi and Nehru, which was to bring everyone along and go forward, but it happened, and it is part of our truth, part of the indelible Indian palimpsest.”
Riaz Haq said…
'Ideology Of Hate' Consuming #India, Says #Gandhi's Great-grandson. Tushar, 63, attributes this tectonic shift to the rise of Prime Minister Narendra #Modi and his #Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (#BJP). #Hindutva #Islamophobia #Hate #Violence https://www.barrons.com/news/ideology-of-hate-consuming-india-says-gandhi-s-great-grandson-01674969308

India's rising tide of Hindu nationalism is an affront to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, his great-grandson says, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the revered independence hero's assassination.

Gandhi was shot dead at a multi-faith prayer meeting on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a religious zealot angered by his victim's conciliatory gestures to the country's minority Muslim community.

Godse was executed the following year and remains widely reviled, but author and social activist Tushar Gandhi, one of the global peace symbol's most prominent descendants, says his views now have a worrying resonance in India.

"That whole philosophy has now captured India and Indian hearts, the ideology of hate, the ideology of polarisation, the ideology of divisions," he told AFP at his Mumbai home.

"For them, it's very natural that Godse would be their iconic patriot, their idol."

Tushar, 63, attributes this tectonic shift to the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Modi took office in 2014 and Tushar says his government is to blame for undermining the secular and multicultural traditions that his namesake sought to protect.

"His success has been built on hate, we must accept that," Tushar added.



"There is no denying that in his heart, he also knows what he is doing is lighting a fire that will one day consume India itself."

Today, Gandhi's assassin is revered by many Hindu nationalists who have pushed for a re-evaluation of his decision to murder a man synonymous with non-violence.

A temple dedicated to Godse was built near New Delhi in 2015, the year after Modi's election, and activists have campaigned to honour him by renaming an Indian city after him.

Godse was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a still-prominent Hindu far-right group whose members conduct paramilitary drills and prayer meetings.



The RSS has long distanced itself from Godse's actions but remains a potent force, founding Modi's party decades ago to battle for Hindu causes in the political realm.

Modi has regularly paid respect to Gandhi's legacy but has refrained from weighing in on the campaign to rehabilitate his killer.

Tushar remains a fierce protector of his world-famous ancestor's legacy of "honesty, equality, unity and inclusiveness".

He has written two books about Gandhi and his wife Kasturba, regularly talks at public events about the importance of democracy and has filed legal motions in India's top court as part of efforts to defend the country's secular constitution.

His Mumbai abode, a post-independence flat in a quiet neighbourhood compound, is dotted with portraits and small statues of his famous relative along with a miniature spinning wheel -- a reference to Gandhi's credo of self-reliance.



Tushar is anxious but resigned to the prospect of Modi winning another term in next year's elections, an outcome widely seen as an inevitability given the weakness of his potential challengers.

"The poison is so deep, and they're so successful, that I don't see my ideology triumphing over in India for a long time now," he says.

Riaz Haq said…
This week marks a watershed moment in a decade of discussion of “grooming gangs”: a much-anticipated Home Office report has concluded that there is no credible evidence that any one ethnic group is over-represented in cases of child sexual exploitation.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/19/home-office-report-grooming-gangs-not-muslim

For many in Britain today the term “grooming gang” immediately suggests Pakistani-heritage Muslim men abusing white girls, but the Home Office researchers now tell us that “research has found that group-based offenders are most commonly White”.


A powerful modern racial myth has been exploded. What started as a far-right trope had migrated into the mainstream, meeting little resistance along the way. In 2011, the Times and its chief investigative reporter, Andrew Norfolk, claimed to have uncovered a new ethnic crime threat, shrouded until then in a supposed “conspiracy of silence”.

The racial stereotype gained credence when the Quilliam Foundation, a controversial “counter-extremism” group, claimed that 84% of “grooming gang offenders” were Asian.

The “grooming gangs” narrative fed into the agenda of the far right, but it was not only there that the issue was racialised: the Labour MP Sarah Champion, for one, wrote a now notorious article in the Sun in 2017, for which she resigned as shadow equalities minister.

The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim.



The horrific and widely reported crimes committed in places such as Rochdale, Oxford and Telford were real: but racist stereotyping and demonisation deflected from that.


The claims that “grooming gangs” were not properly investigated due to “political correctness” and a fear of being accused of racism are heavily undermined by decades of research highlighting the consistent over-policing of minority communities. What’s more, the whole history of the UK’s responses to child sexual exploitation and abuse is littered with failings – as shown by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, Operation Yewtree and numerous other investigations and inquiries. There were also regrettable consequences for child protection, since victims and offenders who don’t fit the stereotype can be overlooked.




This misdirected focus can be found in the Home Office report itself. Its title and executive summary both imply it covers “group-based child sexual exploitation” in the whole. But it fails to include a whole range of problems that might reasonably fit into that category, such as abuse that occurs online, and in schools, care homes and other institutions. Instead, it follows the crowd by dwelling on child sexual exploitation “in the community”. This construct is vaguely defined and poorly justified, although certainly more acceptable sounding than “grooming gangs” – the broadly equivalent term that has no legal meaning but plenty of racial and political baggage.



It might be tempting to think that, if nothing else, a decade of outrage had stimulated wider concern about child sexual exploitation. In truth, it has diverted resources and effort into wasteful paths while opportunities to address systemic barriers to prevention and improve victim support have been missed.



The claims that “grooming gangs” were not properly investigated due to “political correctness” and a fear of being accused of racism are heavily undermined by decades of research highlighting the consistent over-policing of minority communities. What’s more, the whole history of the UK’s responses to child sexual exploitation and abuse is littered with failings – as shown by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, Operation Yewtree and numerous other investigations and inquiries. There were also regrettable consequences for child protection, since victims and offenders who don’t fit the stereotype can be overlooked.
Riaz Haq said…
Home Secretary accused of 'parroting far-right myths' about British Pakistani men | The National

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23429688.home-secretary-accused-parroting-far-right-myths-british-pakistani-men/

Braverman’s language was condemned by Robina Qureshi, CEO of the refugee charity Positive Action in Housing (PAiH).

She called on the Home Secretary to apologise for her “gross misrepresentation”, describing her language around British Pakistani men as “unacceptable”.

The Tory MP blamed “political correctness” for authorities failing to tackle grooming gangs during a media round on Sunday morning.

The UK Government is expected to set out details on Monday of a plan to tackle grooming gangs and better protect children, which will include a consultation on introducing a mandatory duty on professionals working with children to report concerns about sexual abuse.

However, on Sunday, Braverman singled out British Pakistani men over concerns about grooming gangs as she accused authorities of turning a “blind eye” to signs of abuse over fears of being labelled “racist” or “bigoted”.

The Home Secretary said that the “systematic and institutional failure to safeguard the welfare of children when it comes to sexual abuse” was one of the biggest scandals in British history.

“What’s clear is that what we’ve seen is a practice whereby vulnerable white English girls, sometimes in care, sometimes who are in challenging circumstances, being pursued and raped and drugged and harmed by gangs of British Pakistani men who’ve worked in child abuse rings or networks,” she told the Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme on Sky News.



“It’s now down to the authorities to track these perpetrators down without fear or favour relentlessly and bring them to justice.



“We’ve seen institutions and state agencies, whether it’s social workers, teachers, the police, turn a blind eye to these signs of abuse out of political correctness, out of fear of being called racists, out of fear of being called bigoted.”

Charity boss Qureshi blasted the remarks, said they were “unacceptable” and demanded an apology for the “gross misrepresentation” of the Pakistani community.

She said: "The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has reached a new low.



“Her remarks are in direct contradiction to her own Department’s research, which found that most groups of child sex offenders tend to be white men under the age of 30.

“She is openly parroting far-right myths about racial groups and amplifying them into national trends.

“Her commentary is unacceptable, and I call on her to apologise for her gross misrepresentations of our communities.”

Qureshi said Braverman’s comments were “grossly offensive” to the thousands of law-abiding British Pakistanis living in the UK, and noted that newly elected First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf is of Pakistani descent.

“Yet she displays all the tact of a bull in a china shop,” Qureshi added.



“Her comments are tantamount to inciting racist violence which is a criminal offence. “Parliament must reign in this government minister who openly tells mistruths in the face of her own Department’s research.



“Sadly, this Home Secretary appears to be on a mission to cause as much offence as possible to those of immigrant stock, and to appease her far right voter base.

“Yet the irony for her is that the far right don’t want brown or black immigrants, or their children, or her, in this country or in positions of power.”



It comes after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse last year described sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”.

The seven-year inquiry into institutional failings in England and Wales concluded that people in positions of trust should be compelled by law to report child sexual abuse.

The report found that there was currently “a marked absence of a cohesive set of laws and procedures in England and in Wales that require individuals working with children to report child sexual abuse”.

Riaz Haq said…
Mohammad Ramzan falsely accused in grooming case

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-64950862

A woman who falsely claimed she was raped by multiple men and trafficked by an Asian grooming gang has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years.

Eleanor Williams sparked protests in her Cumbrian home town of Barrow after posting photos on social media of injuries she said were from beatings.

But Preston Crown Court heard she inflicted the wounds herself using a hammer.

Williams, 22, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

A two-day sentencing hearing was told three men Williams falsely accused over a three-year period tried to take their own lives after being targeted and suffering "hell on earth".
Riaz Haq said…
Politics of ruin: Why #Modi wants to demolish #India’s #mosques. The necro-economy of #Hindu nationalism relies on making history its most important site. #Muslim shrines must suffer. #Islamophobia #Hindutva #BJP https://aje.io/37g9an via @AJEnglish


A historic 16th-century mosque, Shahi Masjid, in Prayagraj city in India’s Uttar Pradesh state was demolished by bulldozers on January 9 under a road-widening project.

The demolition took place even though, according to the mosque’s imam, a local court was supposed to hear a petition seeking a stay on the city administration’s plans on January 16, a week later.

This incident should have caused public outrage, but the matter hardly made any headlines. The destruction of structures using bulldozers in India has become a banal occurrence and has already lost its shock value.

Shahi Masjid is also not the first ancient mosque to have been sacrificed for a road widening project. Last November, a 300-year-old mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district that stood in the way of a highway was razed.

Another mosque, one of the largest and oldest in India, Shamsi Jama Masjid, an 800-year-old national heritage site in Budaun, Uttar Pradesh, became a matter of dispute last year when a court case was filed on behalf of a local Hindu farmer — backed by the right-wing Hindu nationalist group Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM) — alleging that the mosque is an “illegal structure” built on a demolished 10th-century temple of Lord Shiva. Their petition states that Hindus have rightful ownership of the land and should be able to pray there.

The claim of illegality rests on a far-right narrative according to which most of the Indian mosques were actually temples at one point in time and were forcefully converted into mosques by Muslim rulers. Even though most historians today deny these claims because there is little material evidence to support them, they have enormous popular support.

The rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is increasingly marked by a destructive urgency. The party’s attempts to culturally homogenise India began with the renaming of places in an overtly Hindu vocabulary and progressed to new strategies such as bulldozing Muslim monuments and archaeological excavations to find Hindu roots at Muslim religious sites.

In the past few years, there have been a number of controversies surrounding Mughal monuments. Even the Taj Mahal, a monument of global importance, has not been spared. Far-right Hindu groups claim, again without any evidence, that it was a Hindu temple.

The fate of Indian Muslims has reached a watershed moment. Scores of petitions have been filed by right-wing Hindu groups against mosques across the country.

The past several years have also seen the activation of an informal apparatus of religious volunteers who use religious processions to establish dominance over Muslim places of worship, including mosques and Muslim shrines. During several Hindu festival celebrations in 2022, including Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti, armed Hindu mobs, led at times by BJP members, entered Muslim neighbourhoods and chanted obscene slogans while planting saffron flags on mosques.
Riaz Haq said…
New Indian textbooks purged of nation’s Muslim history

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/06/india-textbooks-muslim-history-changes/


By Anumita Kaur


The Taj Mahal is one of India’s most iconic sites. But this year, millions of students across India won’t delve into the Mughal Empire that constructed it.

Instead, Indian students have new textbooks that have been purged of details on the nation’s Muslim history, its caste discrimination and more, in what critics say warps the country’s rich history in an attempt to further Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda.

The cuts, first reported by the Indian Express, are wide-ranging. Chapters on the country’s historic Islamic rulers are either slimmed down or gone; an entire chapter in the 12th-grade history textbook, “Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts" was deleted. The textbooks omit references to the 2002 riots in the Indian state of Gujarat, where hundreds of Indian-Muslims were killed while Modi was the state’s leader. Details on India’s caste system, caste discrimination and minority communities are missing.

Passages that connected Hindu extremism to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi’s assassination were pruned as well, such as the 12th grade political science textbook line: Gandhi’s “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate [him].”

The new curriculum, developed by India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training, has been in the works since last year and will serve thousands of classrooms in at least 20 states across the country. It follows long-standing efforts by Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to craft a Hindu nationalist narrative for the country — a platform that Modi ran on in 2014 and secured reelection with in 2019.

“The minds of children are now under direct onslaught in this kind of intense way, where textbooks must not ever reflect South Asia’s dynamic, complex history,” said Utathya Chattopadhyaya, a history professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “So you basically create a body of students who come out knowing very little about the history of social justice, the history of democracy, the history of diversity, and so on.”


India has been home to Hindu, Muslim and many other religious communities for centuries. British rule stoked tensions among communities, leading to violence in 1947 after the country was partitioned into Pakistan and modern India.

Hindu nationalism has intensified under Modi. It has led to violent clashes, bulldozing of Indian-Muslim communities and deepening polarization throughout India and its global diaspora.

The curriculum change is another step in the trend, Chattopadhyaya argued. BJP-led state governments have launched textbook revisions for years. But now it’s stretched to the national level.

“This is actually an intensification of something that’s been happening. It is a way of ‘Hindu-izing’ South Asian history and ignoring all other kinds of diverse plural histories that have existed,” he said.
Riaz Haq said…
In Pictures

Gallery
|
Islamophobia
The Rise and Rise of Islamophobia in India
Muslims have been subjected to violence for decades, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has only made things worse.

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/4/18/history-illustrated-the-rise-of-islamophobia-in-india

By Danylo Hawaleshka
Published On 18 Apr 2023
18 Apr 2023
History Illustrated is a weekly series of insightful perspectives that puts news events and current affairs into an historical context using graphics generated with artificial intelligence.

Muslims in India are being targeted by vile propaganda, intense intimidation and mob violence.

For instance, Hindu nationalists in 1992 destroyed the 16th century Babri Mosque. Nationwide riots then killed about 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

In 2002, 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a train fire in Gujarat state, which was blamed on Muslims.

Narendra Modi, who headed the state at that time, was accused of doing little to stop the violence.

In 2019, Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party enacted a citizenship law, seen to discriminate against Muslims.

Human Rights Watch said ensuing riots in New Delhi over that law killed 53 people, mostly Muslims, and that Hindu mobs injured over 200.

Propaganda films like The Kashmir Files demonise Muslims, a film Modi endorsed.

Today, mosques are often attacked, like the 300-year-old one in Uttar Pradesh razed for a highway.

This cycle of violence and vilification directed at a religious group is something history has seen before—and it never ends well.
Riaz Haq said…
#Indian court acquits 69 people of murder of 11 #Muslims during 2002 #Gujarat riots, overseen by current PM #Modi who was Chief Minister of Gujarat State. Former minister from ruling #BJP party among Hindus acquitted of killings in city of #Ahmedabad https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/indian-court-acquits-69-people-of-of-11-muslims-during-2002-gujarat-riots?CMP=share_btn_tw

The case related to the deaths of 11 Muslims who were killed after their homes in the city of Ahmedabad were set alight by Hindu mobs who rampaged through the streets during communal riots that took place in February 2002. According to an investigation into the attack afterwards, “there was no police help received by the Muslims and they were simply at the mercy of the miscreants”.

Thursday’s verdict by the special court dealt another blow for those still fighting for justice for the Gujarat riots. Over the past two decades, the state has been accused of protecting alleged Hindu perpetrators – including those who now hold some of the most powerful political offices in the country – as well as obstructing justice, intimidating Muslim victims and recently releasing some of the few who had been convicted of rape and violence against Muslims in the riots.

Shamshad Pathan, who represented the victims, said they would challenge the court’s decision in a higher court. “Justice has eluded the victims once again,” he said.

The Gujarat riots began after Muslims were suspected of setting alight a train carriage carrying Hindu pilgrims, sparking revenge attacks by Hindu groups in what became one of the worst outbreaks of religious bloodshed in India’s post-independence history. Officially about 1,000 people died in the violence, mostly Muslims, but civil society groups say the number was much higher.

India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, who leads the Hindu nationalist BJP government, was chief minister of Gujarat at the time and was accused of complicity in the bloodshed by allowing the Hindu groups to carry out the revenge attacks and encouraging police and authorities not to intervene to stop the violence. Modi denies any role and a supreme court panel found there was not enough evidence to prosecute him.

In this particular case, 86 Hindus were accused but 17 had died during the trial. Among those acquitted was Maya Kodnani, a former minister for Modi, who was a lawmaker at the time of the riots. She was also an accused in a case relating to the murder of 97 people during the riots and was convicted but later cleared by a higher court.

Those involved in rightwing Hindu vigilante groups Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which both have close links to them BJP, were also among the accused cleared of charges. As the verdict was announced, cries of “Jai Sri Ram”, a Hindu religious greeting that has been increasingly co-opted and weaponised by Hindu nationalists as a battle cry, were shouted outside the court.

“We have been saying from the first day that they were framed,” said the defence lawyer Chetan Shah. “Some of the accused were not present at the scene on the day of the incident.”

The acquittal of the 69 comes after the Gujarat government, which is still ruled by the BJP, recently decided to give early release to 11 Hindu convicts who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang-rape of a Muslim woman and the murder of members of her family, one of the few convictions successfully made in the Gujarat riots.


Riaz Haq said…
Opinion India takes a distressing retreat from democracy

By the Editorial Board

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/20/india-backsliding-democracy-modi-school-textbooks/

Not long ago, a 12th-grade political science textbook in India informed students about the 2002 Gujarat riots. Triggered by the death of Hindu pilgrims in a train fire, a violent rampage killed nearly a thousand Muslims. The chief minister of the province was Narendra Modi. The school textbook noted that the government was criticized for failing to control the violence, and told students that the events “alert us to the dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes. This poses a threat to democratic politics.”

But future classes will not read this passage. Mr. Modi, now prime minister of India, is attempting to impose a Hindu-led majoritarianism upon the country, including on its school curriculums and textbooks. Two pages about the Gujarat events were slashed, and other events in the long history of India’s 200 million Muslims deleted. India’s schoolchildren and its democracy are the worse for it.

India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training has been working since last year on the revised curriculum. According to The Post’s Anumita Kaur, the changes will be felt in thousands of classrooms in at least 20 states. The deletions are wide-ranging. Chapters on the country’s historic Islamic rulers are either slimmed down or gone; an entire chapter in the 12th-grade history textbook, “Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts,” was deleted. Millions of students across India will know of the iconic Taj Mahal, but their textbooks will not delve into the Mughal Empire that constructed it.

According to the Indian Express, which first detailed the cuts last June, four chapters in different grade levels about democracy — and the making of India’s renowned democracy — have been sliced. For example, a chapter titled “Key Elements of a Democratic Government” in the sixth-grade political science text was dropped. The Express reports this is the first detailed introduction to the concept of democracy in middle school and describes critical elements that influence the working of a democratic government, including people’s participation, conflict resolution, equality and justice.

State governments led by Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have for years been rewriting local school textbooks, but now the effort has been extended to the national level. This is a discouraging development for the world’s most populous democracy. A healthy democracy must be prepared to re-examine its past without airbrushing out unpleasant events. It must accommodate different views and disparate peoples in open debate. Erasing the story of India’s Muslims from textbooks is just as outrageous as Russia airbrushing out the history of Joseph Stalin’s repressions or China suppressing mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre. What’s more, indoctrinating children now will ensure that a warped version of history lingers for generations.
Riaz Haq said…
#US religious freedom panel #USCIRF again recommends #India for blacklist. For a 4th year, the independent body says India should be singled out for discrimination against #Muslims and other #minority groups #Modi #Hindutva #Islamophobia https://aje.io/zgyyme via @AJEnglish

An independent commission in the United States has, for the fourth year in a row, recommended that India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, be added to a religious freedom blacklist, saying that conditions in the country for religious minorities “continued to worsen” throughout 2022.

In its annual report on Monday, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) again called on the US Department of State to designate India as a “country of particular concern”.

The independent panel has made appeals for the designation since 2020. The label accuses a government of “systematic, ongoing [and] egregious violations” of religious freedom and opens the door to economic sanctions.

The body said that the Indian government “at the national, state and local levels promoted and enforced religiously discriminatory policies” in 2022. Those included “laws targeting religious conversion, interfaith relationships, the wearing of hijabs and cow slaughter, which negatively impact Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and Adivasis (indigenous peoples and scheduled tribes)”.

The report noted that about 14 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion is Muslim, about 2 percent is Christian, and 1.7 percent is Sikh. Nearly 80 percent of the country is Hindu.

The panel further asserts that the Indian government, led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), “continued to suppress critical voices — particularly religious minorities and those advocating on their behalf”.

The US panel only offers recommendations and has no ability to set policy. There was little expectation the State Department would adopt the commission’s position, as Washington and New Dehli have continued to strengthen their ties in a bid to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

In its report, the religious freedom watchdog noted the administration of US President Joe Biden “failed to designate India” as a “country of particular concern” after it made the recommendation in previous years.

“The United States and India continued to maintain strong bilateral ties around economic trade and technology. Trade reached $120 billion in 2022, making the United States India’s largest trading partner,” the report said.

“President Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted on multiple occasions, including the G20 and G7 Summits and the Quad Leaders Summit,” it added, the latter referring to the informal grouping of the US, India, Japan and Australia.

The Indian government did not immediately respond to the latest report. Following last year’s recommendation, New Delhi’s foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi accused senior US officials of making “ill-informed” and “biased” comments.

“As a naturally pluralistic society, India values religious freedom and human rights,” Bagchi said in a statement at the time.

For its part, the Indian American Muslim Council said the latest USCIRF report “reaffirms what [the rights group] has been saying for years: that India’s government, under Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] has continued to systematically violate the religious freedom of minority communities, particularly Muslims and Christians”.

More recommendations for blacklist
The report also called on the Biden administration to add Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria and Vietnam to its blacklist, and for the redesignation of Myanmar, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

The panel first made the recommendation for Afghanistan last year, following the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August 2021. Afghanistan has long been on the commission’s watch list, and the Taliban itself had been designated of “particular concern” in some of the panel’s earliest reports, from 2000 and 2001.


Riaz Haq said…
The Kerala Story's true picture: 3 'radicalised' women, not 32,000


https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/the-kerala-storys-true-picture-3-radicalised-women-not-32000/articleshow/99945899.cms

KOCHI: Amid the raging controversy over the upcoming film 'The Kerala Story'.


-----------

32K Women Missing Claim Made By 'The Kerala Story' Does Not Add Up While a teaser of the film released in November mentions the 32K figure, the trailer released last week makes no mention of it

https://www.boomlive.in/fact-check/politics/fact-check-viral-the-kerala-story-32000-women-missing-disappeared-isis-sex-slaves-sudipto-sen-21850

The makers of the movie 'The Kerala Story' have claimed that 32,000 women in Kerala belonging to the Hindu and Christian communities have disappeared and have been trafficked to places such as Syria and Afghanistan to be sold as sex slaves to terrorist outfits such as ISIS over the last ten years. This they claim has happened through 'love-jihad' -a term that describes a conspiracy theory peddled by the Hindu right that alleges an elaborate ploy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into romantic relationships with the ultimate aim to convert the latter to Islam.

BOOM found that the makers of 'The Kerala Story' have grossly exaggerated the claim and that there is no data either by the Indian government or international organisations which supports the 32,000 figure. While there have been instances reported (read here, here and here) where law enforcement agencies are probing women from Kerala being duped with promises of jobs or ISIS sympathy, no record reflects a number so large. BOOM found that the reasoning provided by the makers of the film are based on extrapolation and sources from where they are yet to recieve replies, such as Right to Information (RTI) applications. The movie is slated to be released on May 5 as a trailer was recently released for the film, which was followed by a slew of controversies. In a Facebook post, the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, has lashed out against the film and so has his party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress, which is in opposition in the state.

Riaz Haq said…
A new #Modi government-approved #Indian schoolbook no longer says why Nathuram #Godse killed #Gandhi and omits references to #Hindu hard-liners affiliated with #RSS who opposed his vision of religious pluralism. #Islamophobia #Hindutva #BJP https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-was-gandhi-killed-after-official-edit-indias-textbooks-dont-say-d5b86e77?st=gnzmnvpkv53jw42 via @WSJ

NEW DELHI—For years, government-prescribed high-school textbooks in India included a few telling details about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin: The man worked for an extremist Hindu newspaper and had denounced Gandhi, the iconic freedom fighter, as “an appeaser of Muslims.”

A revised version of the Class 12 history book, whose printed copies became available this year, no longer says that. It identifies Nathuram Godse as Gandhi’s killer, but provides no information about him or his motive. Also deleted are broader references to Hindu hard-liners who opposed Gandhi’s vision of religious pluralism for newly independent India 75 years ago.

The edits are among recent changes under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to what students learn about their country’s past. Members of his political party—which is linked to a decades-old movement to shape India into a Hindu-dominant nation—have long criticized school curriculum as unbalanced and biased against Hindus.

It does little, they say, to instill pride in young Indians, and particularly the country’s Hindu majority, in their history and heritage.

Underlying their grievances is a broader ideological debate. Modi supporters accuse the left-leaning, liberal forces that shaped India after independence in 1947 of representing Westernized values and of pandering to Muslims, India’s largest minority. To them, Modi’s rise symbolizes Hindu revival.

Critics accuse Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party of promoting a divisive Hindu nationalist ideology that threatens India’s secular foundations.


The changes to textbooks “go against the idea that education should encourage an open mind and a liberal outlook,” said Krishna Kumar, an academic under whose leadership they were originally written. The books, he said, have been “mutilated so crudely.”

Modi’s supporters say revisions were long overdue. Teaching of India’s precolonial history overemphasized Islamic empires established on its territory and sidelined Hindu kingdoms, they say. Too much importance was given, they say, to the Mughal dynasty, a vastly wealthy empire during the 16th and 17th centuries whose Muslim rulers built the Taj Mahal and left a lasting cultural imprint on the region’s architecture, food and literature.

Hindu nationalists see the Mughal era as a period of temple destruction, religious conversion and the subjugation of Hindu customs.

A chapter on Mughal courts is gone from the Class 12 history book, though another on agrarian life during the empire remains. A two-page table on the battlefield triumphs of Mughal emperors, from Akbar to Aurangzeb, has been removed from a Class 7 book. A chapter on the 13th century Muslim conquest of northern India has also been pruned.

In a public letter, more than 250 historians and academics criticized the move.

“The selective deletion in this round of textbook revision reflects the sway of divisive politics,” they said. Indian history cannot be seen as consisting of Hindu and Muslim periods, they said, adding: “These categories are uncritically imposed on what has historically been a very diverse social fabric.”

The changes were made by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, an autonomous body whose members are mostly appointed by the government. It said it rationalized textbooks to help students catch up after the Covid-19 pandemic and to make space for critical thinking.

The books are used by schools aligned with the central government’s education board and some state-level boards.

College freshman Shivam Kumar, a Modi supporter, welcomes the changes.
Riaz Haq said…
#India cuts periodic table & #evolution from school textbooks. In India, children under 16 returning to school this month will no longer be taught about evolution, periodic table of elements or sources of #energy. #Hindutva #Modi #BJP #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y

In India, children under 16 returning to school this month at the start of the school year will no longer be taught about evolution, the periodic table of elements or sources of energy.

The news that evolution would be cut from the curriculum for students aged 15–16 was widely reported last month, when thousands of people signed a petition in protest. But official guidance has revealed that a chapter on the periodic table will be cut, too, along with other foundational topics such as sources of energy and environmental sustainability. Younger learners will no longer be taught certain pollution- and climate-related topics, and there are cuts to biology, chemistry, geography, mathematics and physics subjects for older school students.

Overall, the changes affect some 134 million 11–18-year-olds in India’s schools. The extent of what has changed became clearer last month when the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the public body that develops the Indian school curriculum and textbooks — released textbooks for the new academic year that started in May.

Researchers, including those who study science education, are shocked. “Anybody who’s trying to teach biology without dealing with evolution is not teaching biology as we currently understand it,” says Jonathan Osborne, a science-education researcher at Stanford University in California. “It’s that fundamental to biology.” The periodic table explains how life’s building blocks combine to generate substances with vastly different properties, he adds, and “is one of the great intellectual achievements of chemists”.

Mythili Ramchand, a science-teacher trainer at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, says that “everything related to water, air pollution, resource management has been removed. “I don’t see how conservation of water, and air [pollution], is not relevant for us. It’s all the more so currently,” she adds. A chapter on different sources of energy — from fossil fuels to renewables — has also been removed. “That’s a bit strange, quite honestly, given the relevance in today’s world,” says Osborne.

More than 4,500 scientists, teachers and science communicators have signed an appeal organized by Breakthrough Science Society, a campaign group based in Kolkata, India, to reinstate the axed content on evolution.

NCERT has not responded to the appeal. And although it relied on expert committees to oversee the changes, it has not yet engaged with parents and teachers to explain its rationale for making them. NCERT also did not reply to Nature’s request for comment.

Chapters closed
A chapter on the periodic table of elements has been removed from the syllabus for class-10 students, who are typically 15–16 years old. Whole chapters on sources of energy and the sustainable management of natural resources have also been removed.

A small section on Michael Faraday’s contributions to the understanding of electricity and magnetism in the nineteenth century has also been stripped from the class-10 syllabus. In non-science content, chapters on democracy and diversity; political parties; and challenges to democracy have been scrapped. And a chapter on the industrial revolution has been removed for older students.

In explaining its changes, NCERT states on its website that it considered whether content overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, the difficulty of the content, and whether the content was irrelevant. It also aims to provide opportunities for experiential learning and creativity.
Riaz Haq said…
#India cuts periodic table & #evolution from school textbooks. In India, children under 16 returning to school this month will no longer be taught about evolution, periodic table of elements or sources of #energy. #Hindutva #Modi #BJP #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y

NCERT announced the cuts last year, saying that they would ease pressures on students studying online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amitabh Joshi, an evolutionary biologist at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru, India, says that science teachers and researchers expected that the content would be reinstated once students returned to classrooms. Instead, the NCERT shocked everyone by printing textbooks for the new academic year with a statement that the changes will remain for the next two academic years, in line with India’s revised education policy approved by government in July 2020.

“The idea [behind the new policy] is that you make students ask questions,” says Anindita Bhadra, an evolutionary biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata. But she says that removing fundamental concepts is likely to stifle curiosity, rather than encourage it. “The way this is being done, by saying ‘drop content and teach less’”, she says, “that’s not the way you do it”.

Evolution axed
Science educators are particularly concerned about the removal of evolution. A chapter on diversity in living organisms and one called ‘Why do we fall ill’ has been removed from the syllabus for class-9 students, who are typically 14–15 years old. Darwin’s contributions to evolution, how fossils form and human evolution have all been removed from the chapter on heredity and evolution for class-10 pupils. That chapter is now called just ‘Heredity’. Evolution, says Joshi, is essential to understanding human diversity and “our place in the world”.

In India, class 10 is the last year in which science is taught to every student. Only students who elect to study biology in the final two years of education (before university) will learn about the topic.

Joshi says that the curriculum revision process has lacked transparency. But in the case of evolution, “more religious groups in India are beginning to take anti-evolution stances”, he says. Some members of the public also think that evolution lacks relevance outside academic institutions.

Aditya Mukherjee, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Dehli, says that changes to the curriculum are being driven by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a mass-membership volunteer organization that has close ties to India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party. The RSS feels that Hinduism is under threat from India’s other religions and cultures.

“There is a movement away from rational thinking, against the enlightenment and Western ideas” in India, adds Sucheta Mahajan, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University who collaborates with Mukherjee on studies of RSS influence on school texts. Evolution conflicts with creation stories, adds Mukherjee. History is the main target, but “science is one of the victims”, she adds.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01770-y
Riaz Haq said…
NCERT textbooks: Why some Indian scholars are disowning books they wrote

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65947356


Among dropped topics are paragraphs on attempts by extreme Hindu nationalists to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi and chapters on federalism and diversity.


The NCERT has also dropped content related to the 2002 Gujarat riots; removed a chapter on Mughal rulers in India; and moved portions on the periodic table and theory of evolution in science books to higher grades, sparking criticism.

The council had said earlier that the changes, which were first announced last year as part of a syllabus "rationalisation" exercise, wouldn't affect knowledge but instead reduce the load on children after the Covid-19 pandemic.

But now some academics who were part of committees that helped design and develop the older textbooks say they don't want to be associated with the new curriculum.

On 8 June, political scientists Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav - who were advisers for political science books originally published in 2006 for classes 9 to 12 - wrote to NCERT, asking it to remove their names from the print and digital editions of the books.

The academics said they objected to the "innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions" as they failed to see "any pedagogic rationale" behind the changes.

The NCERT issued a statement saying such a request "was out of question" because it holds the copyright of all the material it publishes. When contacted, NCERT director DS Saklani referred the BBC to the statement on its website.

The deadlock intensified last week when more than 30 academics also wrote to NCERT asking for their names to be withdrawn from the Textbook Development Committees (TDC) listed in the books. The scholars argued that possessing copyright did not entitle the NCERT to make changes to texts they wrote.

But NCERT said that the TDC's role was "limited to advising how to design and develop the textbooks or contributing to the development of their contents and not beyond this".

It also clarified that the rationalised content is applicable only for the current academic year and that a new set of textbooks will soon be developed based on fresh guidelines that adhere to the new National Education Policy.

The argument has pitted academics against each other. Critics argue that textbooks should serve as a source of introspection and accuse the NCERT of erasing portions that are not palatable to the governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. "The decision of "rationalisation" shows either that the NCERT does not value its autonomy or its leadership does not understand its place in a democracy," Peter Ronald DeSouza, who asked for his name to be withdrawn, wrote last week.

But the NCERT has also received support. Last week, 73 academics issued a statement arguing that school textbooks were in sore need of an update.

"[The critics'] demand is that students continue to study from 17-year-old textbooks rather than updated textbooks. In their quest to further their political agenda, they are ready to endanger the future of crores [tens of millions] of children across the country," they said.

Supporters include the head of India's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the chief of the country's university watchdog, the University Grants Commission (UGC).

Riaz Haq said…
Hundreds of scientists in India have expressed concern over the removal of topics like theory of evolution and periodic table from tenth-grade textbooks.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183578258/hundreds-of-scientists-protest-the-indian-governments-changes-made-to-textbooks


MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Hundreds of scientists in India have expressed concern over the removal of topics like the theory of evolution and the periodic table from 10th-grade textbooks. The latest omission is one in a series of changes made this year, including in history textbooks. Critics say that it's part of the ruling BJP government's agenda to replace Western scientific concepts with traditional Hindu theories. From Delhi, Shalu Yadav reports.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SATYA PAL SINGH: (Speaking Hindi).

SHALU YADAV, BYLINE: "For thousands of years since we've been hearing stories from our grandparents, no one has ever said that they saw someone go into a forest and seeing a monkey that turned into a man. Darwin's theory is scientifically wrong."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SINGH: (Speaking Hindi).

YADAV: Those were the words of India's ruling BJP party MP Satya Pal Singh in 2017, rubbishing Darwin's theory of evolution and advocating its removal from school curriculum. Six years on, his wish has come true.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: A certain circuit went on to say that there is a banning evolution in India.

YADAV: English naturalist Charles Darwin's theory that states that humans shared a common ancestor with apes has been removed from grade 10 science textbook. The government justified the move by saying that the theory is still a part of grade 12 syllabus, but the reality is that only a small fraction of students choose the science stream beyond grade 10, and even smaller fraction of those choose biology. And so the exclusion of this theory from grade 10 syllabus means that millions of students will never get to read about it. The chapter on periodic table has also been scrapped.

AMITABH PANDEY: We are trying to compete with China. We are trying to compete with the U.S. But how is it possible without scientific temper, without scientific worldview?

YADAV: Amitabh Pandey is one of the hundreds of scientists who wrote an open letter protesting the government's decision. He says depriving students of basic scientific knowledge is dangerous.

PANDEY: I'm afraid this is taking India backward. Last decade, we have lost almost two generations. But world is going ahead. Nobody will wait for us. Nobody will care for us.

YADAV: The belief that ancient Hindu practices are superior to modern science is not new in India. It existed way before the Hindu nationalist BJP government came to power in 2014. But this viewpoint, which used to be on the fringe, is now taking the center stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI: (Speaking Hindi).

YADAV: This is the voice of India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, claiming that the world's first plastic surgery was performed in India thousands of years ago on a Hindu god, Ganesha, who sports an elephant trunk on his face. He also claimed that genetic science existed in ancient India. Taking a cue from the prime minister, many ministers and government officials have made similar unscientific claims.

MEERA NANDA: That whole business of ancient Indians being the first scientists is part of that whole agenda of making India great again. You know, it's Trumpian in that sense. You know, make India great again by making it Hindu again. That's sort of thing is going on.
Riaz Haq said…
Racist French Police Union: “Our colleagues, like the majority of citizens, can no longer bear the tyranny of these violent minorities. The time is not for union action, but for combat against these "pests". Surrendering, capitulating, and pleasing them by laying down arms are not the solutions in light of the gravity of the situation “

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1674959206422806528?s=20


Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
We're truly witnessing a radicalization on both sides in France.

This is an unreal communiqué by the main French police unions, essentially declaring France is in a civil war and that the police is in the "resistance" against the government.

This is the translation:

"Now that's enough...

Facing these savage hordes, asking for calm is no longer enough, it must be imposed!

Restoring the republican order and putting the apprehended beyond the capacity to harm should be the only political signals to give.

In the face of such exactions, the police family must stand together.

Our colleagues, like the majority of citizens, can no longer bear the tyranny of these violent minorities.

The time is not for union action, but for combat against these "pests". Surrendering, capitulating, and pleasing them by laying down arms are not the solutions in light of the gravity of the situation.

All means must be put in place to restore the rule of law as quickly as possible.

Once restored, we already know that we will relive this mess that we have been enduring for decades.

For these reasons, Alliance Police Nationale and UNSA Police will take their responsibilities and warn the government from now on that at the end, we will be in action and without concrete measures for the legal protection of the Police, an appropriate penal response, significant means provided, the police will judge the extent of the consideration given.

Today the police are in combat because we are at war. Tomorrow we will be in resistance and the government will have to become aware of it."
Riaz Haq said…
At Funeral for Nahel M. Near Paris, Anguish, Anger and Racial Tensions

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/world/europe/nahel-funeral-france-protests.html

For many in the crowd, including hundreds who could not fit in the mosque to mourn the teenager killed by a police officer, his story felt familiar.

For two hours, in a mood of anguish and anger, hundreds of members of the large French Muslim community lined up outside the Ibn Badis mosque in Nanterre to mourn a teenager, one of their own, fatally shot by a police officer at a traffic stop.

The shooting of Nahel M. took place on Tuesday, followed by four nights of violent rioting in major French cities, and nothing suggested any return to calm as the young man’s funeral unfolded. His uncle, flanked by friends and security agents employed by the mosque, yelled abuse at anyone trying to film the proceedings. There were scuffles.

The police were nowhere to be seen, after 45,000 officers had been deployed overnight to confront the tide of rage provoked by a shooting at close range not far from the mosque that was caught on video. It would have been a dangerous provocation for any uniformed French police officer to appear.

For Ahmed Djamai, 58, it was a familiar story. The police lied, he said, alluding to initial news media reports that the young man had plowed into officers. They would have gotten away with it, he said, but for the appearance of the apparently incriminating video that went viral. “The government always protects the police, a state within the state,” he said.

---------

The mutual incomprehension and tensions between the French state, and the many citizens who are convinced the protests have a legitimacy founded in a pattern of police violence against minorities, was palpable in Nanterre.

“Nahel helped me carry my shopping upstairs, and I would give him some change,” said Thérèse Lorto, a nurse. “He delivered pizzas. He did some stupid adolescent stuff. But the police, they are full of hatred. It is far too easy to kill and get away with it.”

After the service, men carried a white coffin out of the mosque and placed it on a vehicle. A long procession formed behind it of cars, motorbikes and people walking. A young man wearing a “Justice for Nahel” shirt rode a motorbike on one wheel as the crowd moved toward the Mont Valérien cemetery, which only the men were allowed to enter.

Women sat outside. “It’s terrible,” said one. “Only God should give and take away lives.”
Riaz Haq said…
UN rights office calls on France to address ‘deep issues’ of racism in policing

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/06/1138247


In a statement released in Geneva on Friday, OHCHR Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani expressed concern over the death of 17-year-old Nahel M on Tuesday, after he was shot dead driving away from a traffic stop in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre.

According to news reports, at least 875 people were arrested in major cities around the country on Thursday night, after around 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell protests and rioting over the killing.

President Emmanuel Macron has urged parents to keep their children off the streets, while in Paris, shots have been ransacked and cars set alight, despite the heavy police presence.

Voluntary homicide charge
The officer who shot the youth has reportedly apologized to the family and has been officially charged with voluntary homicide.

Ms. Shamdasani noted that an investigation has been launched into the alleged voluntary homicide.

“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement”, she said.

Proportional use of force
“We also emphasize the importance of peaceful assembly. We call on the authorities to ensure use of force by police to address violent elements in demonstrations always respects the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, precaution and accountability.

She called for any allegations of disproportionate use of force by people exercising their rights to protest, to be swiftly investigated.

According to latest figures released by France’s police regulator, there were 37 deaths during police operations recorded in 2021, of whom ten were shot dead.
Riaz Haq said…
Speaking at an event, (Bollywood Actor) Kajol said, “…Chnage especially in a country like India is slow. It’s very very slow because for one we are steeped in our tradition, steeped in our thought process and, of course, it has to be with tradition. You have political leaders who do not have educational system background. I’m sorry I’m going to go out and say that.”


https://www.jantakareporter.com/entertainment/kajol-issues-clarification-after-modi-supporters-attack-actor-for-uneducated-leaders-comments/405895/

She added, “We are being ruled by leaders, so many of them, who do not have that viewpoint which I think education gives you.”

Kajol’s comments evoked angry reactions from BJP supporters who felt that the popular actor was taking a potshot at Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose educational qualification has been a matter of intense scrutiny for many years. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had recently accused him of being ‘uneducated’ while others raised questions on his alleged fake degree.

Modi and his administration have refused all attempts to make his degree public fearing that this could expose the Indian PM’s educational qualification.

BJP supporters launched brutal attack on Kajol for her comments. Many accused her being influenced by the thought process of Muslim actors particularly Shah Rukh Khan. The pair of Shah Rukh and Kajol ruled the box office in the late 90s and 2020s.

Facing backlash from BJP supporters, Kajol issued a clarification stating that she wasn’t pointing at anyone in particular. She wrote, “I was merely making a point about education and its importance. My intention was not to demean any political leaders, we have some great leaders who are guiding the country on the right path.”

Kajol, meanwhile, has found plenty of support from netizens, who wondered why her comments had irked only Modi supporters even though the actor did not name anyone.

Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote, “So Kajol says we are governed by leaders who are uneducated and have no vision. Nobody outraging since its her opinion not necessarily a fact and also has named nobody but all Bhakts are outraged. Please don’t Yale your Entire Political Science knowledge.”

Comedian Kunal Kamra tweeted, “Everyone is pointing out that Actress Kajol hasn’t finished her education & I believe that’s the only reason that she feels an educated leadership can help our country.”
Riaz Haq said…
The Crisis in the Western world and deceptive Indian media
in World — by Vidya Bhushan Rawat — 02/07/2023

https://countercurrents.org/2023/07/the-crisis-in-the-western-world-and-deceptive-indian-media/


The crisis in France is not known to those who understand that a falsehood is being played in the name of ‘liberalism’ and ‘secularism’. The ‘experts’ cleverly project this as an “Islamic’ invasion on ‘secular’ and ‘liberal’ France but it is a pity that we don’t understand how colonialism worked through destroying the culture and heritage of local communities everywhere. French colonialism destroyed Africa and still wanted African labour to work in France. Anyone can see who are the people cleaning and sweeping the streets in France or who are the taxi drivers. A majority of these workforce actually come from Africa particularly Algeria where French brutalities are still remembered.

While, it is easier to say that French ‘constitution’ is secular and it does not discriminate against people on the basis of ‘religion’ but that can be termed as a ‘secular’ rhetoric very much like the ‘Pradhan Sevak’ speaking that in India there is no discrimination and laws apply to all the citizens in the similar way but an independent analysis of the jails and the people inside them can reveal and expose all ‘secular’, ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’ and every variety of political thoughts in various countries. You don’t need to speak about the constitution and liberalism. Let that fight be kept aside and investigate who are the people suffering and languishing in jail in France, in America or in India. The commonality would be the people victim of racial and caste apartheid apart from Muslim minorities.

The racial discrimination in the Western World is a powerful issue which takes shape in the form of Islamophobia and many times takes shelter in the name of ‘liberalism’. The American Supreme Court’s recent ruling against affirmative action reflects the serious prejudices in the system. These are not isolated incidents if we see how an African American person can face severe retaliation against so-called violation of law unlike their white compatriots. The crisis in France happened very much like atrocious murder of George Floyed in the United States. The White police are ready to kill any black American with much bigger ferocity than we can imagine. American ‘liberalism’ has a ‘dirty’ and ‘dark’ chapter of suppression, isolation and absolute disempowerment of the African American. A few famed people in the Hollywood and elsewhere can’t hide the dirty fact that the representation of blacks in the US top services, judiciary,

The situation in France is no different. The bogey of ‘secularism’ is often used to suppress the racial question. You have ‘right to offend’ the sensibilities of the marginalised by mocking at their practices but you don’t question the atrocious, horrific track record of your country by looting the resources of Africa and other places.

If you look at what happened on the day of Eid in Sweden then you will realise how Europeans right wings as well as so-called liberals have vastly ignored the issues out of the colonial brutalities in Africa, Asia and Latin America by portraying the native communities as uncultured, ignorant and living in knee depth superstitions. They forget how the Church was used to keep the people further subjugated. The question is not merely whether some one is rational or not but to use humanism and rationalism to hide the dirty fact of racial discrimination is definitely a crime against humanity. It is not for unknown reasons that the Swedish authorities allowed the protesters to burn the Quran in front of a mosque on Eid Day. Can we justify this act in the name of ‘freedom of expression’? Definitely, the track record of the Islamic countries and societies in dealing with diversity is not great and ordinary Muslim pay the price for living in other countries for no fault of theirs.

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