Monday, November 30, 2009

Europe unites to deplore Swiss ban on minarets - By Charles Bremner in Paris - TIMESONLINE

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6937486.ece

November 30, 2009

Europe unites to deplore Swiss ban on minarets

A minaret installed on the roof of a Turkish cultural centre is seen with a church in the background in Wangen bei Olten, Switzerland

(Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

A minaret installed on the roof of a Turkish cultural centre, one of four in Switzerland

Charles Bremner in Paris

7 COMMENTS

RECOMMEND? (17)

The Swiss and European establishment united today in deploring yesterday's decision by Swiss voters to outlaw the construction of minarets but conservative leaders warned that the referendum showed genuine fear over Islam on the continent.

Swiss officials, media and business leaders voiced shame over a vote that they say will stigmatise the country's 400,000 Muslims and stain Switzerland's name in the Muslim world. In contrast, hard right leaders in France, Austria, Italy and the Netherlands hailed what they depicted as a triumph for the people against the elite.

Le Temps, Geneva's establishment newspaper, said: "The vote was inspired by fear, fantasies and ignorance." Damage to the country's international standing would be spectacular, it said. "Vengeance, boycotts, retaliation ... this clash with Islam could cost dearly."

Tagesanzeiger, the Zurich daily, said that the vote, staged on the initiative of the nationalist Swiss People's Party (SVP), showed the country's deep division between outward-looking modernisers and a traditionalist backlash. The 57 per cent approval of the minaret ban would "strengthen the international isolation of Switzerland even among western nations," it said.

Qurbani Stories from Mumbai - By Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, November 30, 2009

Qurbani Stories from Mumbai

In the city of Mumbai, where Muslims number about 3 million, in a total Metropolitan population of 13.6 million, the difficulties that Muslim face in carrying on their religious duties, is something the world is yet to know about. Though there is a general sense of calm within the community, the day to day discrimination that Muslim face borders sometime on absurdity. This Eid, I heard 3 stories, which give a picture of vagaries of performing Qurbani, in the city, though not always directly relating to Administration or non-Muslim citizenry. The city is just not geared to take any note of Muslims residing in the city.

Muzzammil, a call center employee raised in a ritualist Muslim family, though married to a converted Catholic girl, thought to have his first crack at a separate Qurbani, while settled a new rented home of his own, in Versova village. Around Versova, there are some unofficial spots where sheep and goats are sold. It is presumed that even though that impromptu sheep market is to facilitate Muslims to buy their Qurbani sheep and goat locally, without having to travel long distance to Deonar Slaughter House complex where bulk of Qurbani lot is brought and offered for sale, the Versova road side sheep cluster owes, according to public perception, more to the business acumen of local police, who are ever ready to claim their cut while providing even the slightest services to the people of Mumbai. Muzzammil found to his distress that the prices are so high that it was less the price of sheep/ goat and more possibly for the extortion money that was to be compulsorily, possibly in advance, when miserable looking sheep and goats are herded to the area a week before the Eid ul Ad'ha feast day (Bakri Eid in local lingo). Muddassir and his friend, Suhel, who is working with a Baskin Robbins franchise, thought of traveling all the way to Deonar to buy their goat. There they found a virtual sea of sheep and goats, but instead of competitive prices that should be the hallmark of any such mandi, they were quoted Rs. 20,000 to 40,000 per head. Both young boys got the shock of their young lives to hear of such high skyrocketed prices. They spent 4 hours trying to buy 2 goats of good height and bulk, as per Sharia requirement of offering the best for Qurbani. After much haggling with professional market traders, for whom the once a year buyer was dead meat, they finally got one each for Rs.12000 per head. Now the problem of transporting the goats to Versova was a big headache. Muzzammil who had spent a year in New Delhi, and was amazed at the communal divide in the capital where Muslims were treated either with awe or with palpable hatred, depending in the locality you are moving about. Having been born in the cosmopolitan Mumbai and had thrived in disco circles, he could not help comparisons between the two cities. He now felt that in his home city, the way non-Muslims are responding to Qurbani and Qurbani related issues depict a deliberate deterioration of communal harmony that had prevailed at grass root levels, even after Bombay Riots and bombings, both sordid events relegated to mean politics of the electoral distortions. The only means Muzzammil could find to transport his Qurbani goat, was the ubiquitous three-wheeler auto-rickshaw. (The other alternative was to ride the animal all the way back home). Nobody was prepared to give a ride to a man and his goat. One did agree to take Muddassir and his Qurbani, as he was traveling in that direction. The only condition was that Muddassir should wash the auto-rickshaw when they reached his destination. Poor Muzzammil had to agree to such onerous terms, all for the sake of Almighty Allah, who had enjoined him to the sacrifice an animal to prove his devotion to his Creator. When the party reached the building where Muzzammil's elder brother lives, Muzzammil took the auto to a distant corner in the compound, fetched water and washed the auto-rickshaw with buckets of water. The Auto-man still complained about the stink of the goat. Muzzammil had to reward him extra, above whatever he had agreed to pay, just to get him off his head.

In the building, where Muzzammil had planned to sacrifice the goat, the majority of flat owners are Muslims; so apparently there was no hassle about Qurbani, if it was to be allowed or not. Those Muslims, who are not staying in 'Muslim majority buildings', just cannot get their society's permission to sacrifice the goats. However, Muzzammil had to content with another big problem. It so happened that there are more than 20 goats and sheep to be scarified and only one butcher was available. Lots were drawn, about who will get the first chance to get his goat sacrificed. The whole list was already finalized. Consequently, when his turn came, it was one o'clock in the afternoon. Both Muzzammil and his goat wilted in the scorching heat of November Mumbai. When the butcher finished with his sacrifice, Muzzammil was feeling as dead as the sacrificial goat.

The next problem was to distribute the sacrifice mutton. The total weight of goat, the finished product came to about 40 kilos. He was enjoined to make 3 parts of the lot, one for himself, one for the relatives and friends, and the third for the poor people, not necessarily from the Muslim community. In fact, wherever, it is known that Eid sacrifices are being performed, hordes of poor people gathered to collect freely distributed meat, which they would hardly even dream of buying and cooking, given their economic background. It is well known that people from Dalits, OBC and others waited whole year for this occasion to relish the rich quality of the sacrifice meat. (There are exceptions to the rule. A high caste Hindu, known for his devotional jaunts and strict veg routine at home, eagerly sought the sacrifice mutton, to the surprise of the Muslim neighbour. After some years, it was reported through maids’ grapevine that in fact, he offered that mutton to his dog.)

Transport being the big problem, even though he made small packages for the relatives and friends, many of whom, though could afford and were enjoined to offer Eid Qurbani, had no energy to go through the rigmarole of the sacrifice logistics, the spread of his relatives and friends all over the city, made it next to impossible that he could reach everyone of them, to complete his religious mission. To find a ready solution, he chose a Versova orphanage, where he gave bulk of the sacrifice. Still so much remained that the fridge freezer conked out. Next day, he took every single piece of mutton and dragged himself to the distant Bandra suburb, where his granny had more established contacts to distribute the sacrifice mutton. He had his favorite granny’s finger licking chops and got a take-away fashion plastic bag full of Biryani for his wife, who had hardly the skill to prepare an Eid biryani for his Muslim husband. A call-center employee, used to stay awake long hours, Muzzammil was so tired by the time he got a half kilo of biryani and headed home, he wished for a stretcher and an ambulance that could transport him to Versova and a long stretch of sleep, when he would certainly not be counting sheep.

Ashfaq Munshi Saheb is a big family man. He stays in a beautiful old bungalow, bang on the Perry Road, Bandra. He got about a dozen of goats a night before Eid and sheltered them all in his compound at the back of his residence. In the morning he found, one goat dead. Now, more than the sacrifice, his problem was how to dispose the dead goat. Since the goat was already marked for sacrifice, it cannot possibly be treated as garbage. They decided to bury it in Bandra’s Naupada Qabarastan. When they got the dead sacrifice to Qabrastan, the in-charge refused to bury it in the graveyard. After hours of haggling and arguing, the in-charge pointed to a heap of rubble in the adjoining Railway yard, long deserted and rotting with rusted steel remnants of old steam engines and relics of old discarded train bogies. They dug a deep hole in the rubble and buried the sacrifice goat, with proper rituals reading fateha on the improvised grave. It is difficult for Ashfaq Saheb to make out if his sacrifice was in order or not. He has yet to get a fatwa. But for the time being his problem is dead and buried under heaps of rubble.

Not was the same case with 4 heads of cattle, thrown on a garbage dump, in Dharavi, Mumbai, reportedly India’s largest slum area. Big cattle are allowed to be slaughtered only in Mumbai Municipal Corporation’s Deonar Slaughter House. The 4 severed head belonged to 4 animals legally slaughtered at Deonar. An official receipt against Municipal fee details is handed over to help people to transport sacrifice slaughter across the city, from Deonar to the residence of those making the sacrifice. At short distance around the entire city, roam rowdy gangs of extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) rabble rousers. The Municipal receipt is proof enough that no illegality is involved in the Qurbani. That receipt saved the Dean of the orphanage that got the 4 cattle sacrificed. While the Dean was out, some boys decided to throw the 4 heads into the neighbourhood dump, without realizing the havoc they could cause. Somebody informed VHP gang and they gathered a big crowd of protestors, demanding the perpetrator of crime to be arrested and punished. Luckily, the police immediately came on the scene, investigated the matter, checked the Municipal receipts and handed back the severed heads back to the Dean for more appropriate disposal. A communal riot was barely averted.

On the other hand, Muzzammil, brother of Muddassir, had his own tale of woes. He had a string of bad luck with his sacrificial sheep. The ones he got home were found to have crooked horns and milk teeth. That is unacceptable as a sacrifice. The animal should be without any defect or blemish. Back he ferried them, to get a replacement pair. The next morning he found, one of the two fuming at the mouth. Immediately, he transported the goat back to the dealer and got his money back. The sheer logistics of transporting animals from one point to another in a city is not everybody’s cup of tea. There are no organised social service groups that take the pain out of the practice. It is reported that Kuwait authorities have a very streamlined system, where a person selects his goat, sheep, bull or camel and pays the amount including the service charges. The animal is collected from him and he is given a numbered token. At the other end of the assembly line slaughter house, he gets his sacrifice, all nicely processed and packed in parts, ready for distribution. The authority of a Muslim state certainly makes it easy for the Muslim citizens to trust the establishment and hand over all Qurbani details to it. In India, one wonders if any voluntary Muslim organisation will be able to earn people’s trust and make life easier for a Muslim who wants to offer a Qurbani on Eid ul Adha. It is another matter that any such organised system of Qurbani will robe the charm of adventure that goes with Qurbani ritual every year.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Being Muslim at the wrong time in America - By Stephen Lendman in Chicago - AL AHRAM - Weekly - Cairo, Egypt

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/974/focus.htm

Being Muslim at the wrong time in America

Post 9/11, America has declared war on Islam, as a disturbing recent case in Michiganshows, writes Stephen Lendman* in Chicago

Click to view caption

A wounded soldier is carried to an ambulance at Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 died and 30 were injured by Major Nidal Malik Hasan

On 28 October, New York Times writer Nick Bunkley wrote the following: "Federal agents (today) fatally shot a man they described as the leader of a violent Sunni Muslim separatist group in Detroit." Targeted was Luqman Ameen Abdullah, "whom agents were trying to arrest in Dearborn on charges that included illegal possession and sale of firearms and conspiracy to sell stolen goods."

The Times echoed FBI allegations that Abdullah "began firing at them from a warehouse (and) was shot in the return fire...." It alleged that Abdullah said "America must fall," that if police tried to arrest him he'd "strap a bomb on and blow up everybody" and that he urged his followers to get bulletproof vests by "shoot(ing) a cop in the head and tak(ing) their vest."

In fact, none of these things happened, and no surprise. No bombs were found or went off, and bulletproof vests are easily bought online from websites like bulletproofme.com, so why shoot anyone to get them?

Post 9/11, America has declared war on Islam with the FBI in the lead at home. It notoriously targets the vulnerable, entraps them with paid informants, inflates bogus charges, spreads them maliciously through the media, then intimidates juries to convict and sentence innocent men and some women to long prison terms. Justice is nearly always denied. At times wilful killings are committed. The Detroit Muslims are their latest victims.

However, in the face of such injustice the Muslim community is reacting. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) "is a public service agency working for the civil rights of American Muslims, for the integration of Islam into American pluralism, and for a positive, constructive relationship between American Muslims and their representatives." Since its 1988 founding, it has become known for promoting "Mercy, Justice, Peace, Human Dignity, Freedom, and Equality for all."

On 29 October, MPAC's executive director, Salam Al-Marayati said that "there is a clear and present danger in the escalating mob mentality against vulnerable Muslim Americans," and the organisation called for an investigation into Abdullah's death by shooting, saying it was "deeply disturbed" by the incident.

So is the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), a national network of masjids (mosques), Muslim organisations and individuals committed to addressing the needs of the American Muslim community. It released a statement saying, "it is with deep sadness and concern that we announce the shooting to death of Imam Luqman A. Abdullah, of Masjid Al-Haqq (Detroit, MI). Imam Luqman was a representative of theDetroit Muslim community to the National Ummah and the general assembly (Shura) of the MANA."

Ummah founder Jamil Al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown) wanted it to be an association of mosques in US cities to coordinate religious and social services primarily in the black community. Calling it a "nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African- Americans" is an "offensive mischaracterisation" of the group's nature and aims.

Those who have worked with Imam Abdullah know him for having "advocated for the downtrodden and always speaking about the importance of connecting to the needs of the poor." Alleging that he and his followers engaged in illegal activity, resisted arrest and waged an "offensive jihad against the American government" are "shocking and inconsistent," MANA said.

On 30 October, the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT), a coalition of major national Islamic organisations in the United States, issued this statement: "It is imperative that an independent investigation of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah's death make public the exact circumstances in which he died. And unless the FBI has evidence linking the criminal allegations to the religious affiliation of the suspects, we ask that federal authorities stop injecting religion into this case. The unjustified linkage of this case to the faith Islam will only serve to promote an increase in existing anti-Muslim stereotyping and bias in our society."

AMT also urged the Congressional Tri-Caucus (African-American, Latino and Asian) to call for a judicial enquiry. A statement from The International Council for Urban (Formations) Peace, Justice and Empowerment read that "we are appalled by the raids on Masjid Al-Haqq and a halal meat packing plant that left (Abdullah) dead. We are demanding an independent investigation into this action that is clearly the result of a climate of Islamophobia fed by law enforcement and a media bent on sensationalism. (The FBI's) complaint and the resulting raid are nothing more than government- sponsored terrorism against a group that was working to help the community."

"The inconsistencies in this investigation are glaring. The case is based on sworn statements of informants. These informants were convicted criminals who were paid by the federal government for their 'work.' These criminals were used to engage and entrap law-abiding citizens. We never heard Imam Abdullah make any statements (or suggest any actions) consistent with the statements in the complaint....The FBI has stated that this was not a terrorism case. However, the investigation was conducted by a counter-terrorism unit."

"Masjid Al-Haqq, under the direction of Imam Abdullah, fed the hungry, housed the homeless, worked with gangs and the formerly incarcerated to turn a crime-ridden and drug-infested neighbourhood around to becoming a productive community.... The most disturbing fact is that a religious leader who reached out to his people and his community is dead, the victim of a society that sees anyone who is different as dangerous."

Omar Regan, Abdullah's son, led the Friday, 30 October prayers at the Al-Haqq Mosque, and said the following: "My father was a sharp-tongued individual. He would talk about his dislike of the government, about how law enforcement wasn't protecting and serving the people. But speaking his emotions and acting on (them) are two different things."

Other community members echoed that sentiment in accusing the FBI of heavy-handed tactics that killed Abdullah maliciously from multiple gunshot wounds.

Abdullah Al-Amin, an imam at Detroit's Muslim Centre (the city's largest black mosque), said he had known Luqman for years and never heard him talk about wanting a separate Muslim state, just something "like the Pennsylvania Dutch have (with) their own communities and stuff."

He and about 20 other Detroit imams attended a 29 October meeting with US Attorney Terrence Berg and FBI Special Agent Andrew Arena at which they charged the agency with entrapping Abdullah, then killing him in cold blood. One informant, they said, was a former Abdullah follower with a criminal past, and he and the others "came to a place where people are not getting social security or unemployment. They had nothing," so could easily be manipulated to sell stolen items they provided.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that "the very incendiary rhetoric that the FBI alleges, I never heard that from (Abdullah). There was nothing extraordinary about him... I knew him as a respected imam in the Muslim community... I knew him to be charitable. He would open up the mosque to homeless people. He used to run a soup kitchen and feed indigent people... I knew nothing of him that was related to any nefarious or criminal behaviour."

Walid added, "is this the kind of excessive force that we black Americans are all too familiar with?" He also questioned using informants he called "agent provocateurs", who entice law-abiding people to incriminate themselves.

Other community members believe Abdullah was maliciously targeted, that the FBI likely initiated the gunfire, and that if he shot back it was in self-defence. Even the FBI's complaint admitted that whatever alleged crimes were planned or committed, they were minor and inconsequential and were hardly offences warranting a high-profile raid, shoot-out and political assassination.

For its part, on 28 October, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a press release headlined "Eleven Members/Associates of Ummah Charged with Federal Violations -- One Subject Fatally Shot During Arrest". The FBI and US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Terrence Berg, also charged "Luqman Ameen Abdullah, aka Christopher Thomas, and 10 others with conspiracy to commit several federal crimes, including theft from interstate shipments, mail fraud to obtain the proceeds of arson, illegal possession and sale of firearms and tampering with motor vehicle identification numbers. The 11 defendants are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years, and are known to be armed."

Those charged were "believed to be armed and dangerous, (so) special safeguards were employed by law- enforcement to secure the arrests without confrontation. During the arrests, the suspects were ordered to surrender. At one location, four (did) and were arrested without incident. Luqman Ameen Abdullah did not surrender and fired his weapon. An exchange of gun fire followed and Abdullah was killed."

"Abdullah was the leader of part of a group which calls themselves Ummah ('the Brotherhood'), a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law governed state within the United States. The Ummah is ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a (life) sentence (without parole) in USP Florence, CO, ADMAX (a "Supermax" prison), for the murder of two police officers in Georgia."

In the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, a criminal complaint named Luqman Ameen Abdullah (aka Christopher Thomas), Mohamed Abdel-Bassir (aka Franklin D. Roosevelt Williams), Mohamed Abdel-Salam (aka Mohamed Abdel-Salam; aka Gregory Stone; aka Gun Man; aka Norman Shields), Abdel-Sabour (aka Swayne Edward Davis), Muhahid Carswell (aka Muhahid Abdullah, Luqman's son), Abdullah Beard (aka Detric Lamont Driver), Mohamed Philistine (aka Mohamed Palestine; aka Mohamed Al-Sahli),Yasser Ali Khan, Adam Hussein Ibrahim, Garry Laverne Porter (aka Mujahid), and Ali Abdel-Raqib in the case.

At the time of the raid, three of the men were still at large -- Mujahid Carswell (Abdullah's son), Mohamed Philistine and Yasser Ali Khan. However, Windsor, Ontariopolice announced the arrest of Carswell the next day in Canada, and on 31 October, they arrested Philistine and Khan.

The unsealed complaint charged Abdullah with "espous(ing) the use of violence against law enforcement, (and) train(ing) members of his group in the use of firearms and martial arts in anticipation of some type of action against the government." It said that "Abdullah and other members of this group were known to carry firearms and other weapons."

According to FBI Counter-Terrorism Squad Special Agent Gary Leone, a "confidential source" (aka paid informant) called S-2 provided "reliable and credible" information, "independently corroborated by other sources, and by consensual recordings he has made with the members of the Ummah at the direction of the FBI." In a "surreptitiously" recorded 12 December 2007 conversation, "S-2 told Abdullah he had asked to donate US$5,000 to pay to have someone 'do something' during the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit.

Abdullah said he would not be involved in injuring innocent people for no reason. "If there's something to be done... it (has) to be legitimate." He then allegedly said, "things are coming... I got some violence (in me) because of what they did to Imam Jamil (H. Rap Brown)... I got some stuff, man, I got some soldiers with me... Brothers that I know would, you know, if I say 'Let's go, we are going to go and do something,' they would do it."

Leone said this and other recordings "confirm(ed) by (another paid informant) S-1 (showed) that Abdullah and his followers view themselves as soldiers at war against the United States government, and against non-Muslims," yet nothing in his above statement says this, with the result that the charges amount to putting FBI allegations in the mind of a dead man who is unable to refute them.

While the DOJ presented no evidence of a plot, a crime or an intention to commit one, the FBI has used three paid informants for over two years. On 10 October 2008, the third, S-3, allegedly recorded Abdullah as saying, "we have to cut the ties to (Christians, Jews, and the Kuffar (infidels). You cannot please them until you follow their religion... Obama is a Kafir (infidel, or non- Muslim, an insulting term for any African- American)....The premise of Allah and Islam (is) 'the worst Muslim is better than the best Kafir'... We should be trying to figure out how to fight the Kuffar....Washington is trying to stop everything we do... They are my enemy, and I should be trying to plot how to make moves to get some things accomplished... (We) need to plan to do something."

These and other recordings show anger, not an intention to commit crime. Yet that is what the DOJ alleges. Saying "we are going to have to fight against the Kafir" suggests resistance against a hostile state. Even stronger statements, allegedly recorded, are not hard evidence of planned violence against the FBI, other federal agents, or anyone else.

In its 28 October press release, the DOJ acknowledged that the above criminal complaint "is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt. A trial cannot be held on felony charges in a complaint. When the investigation is completed a determination will be made whether to seek a felony indictment." Yet, the FBI killed Abdullah, allegedly in a shoot-out with only its account for proof, the FBI being an agency that is notorious for political assassinations and twisting facts to make its case.

In a widely distributed message, Imam Umar responded by writing that "the FBI ups the ante. They set up Imam Luqman of Detroit and murdered him. We know him and the community he comes from. This is no terrorist trap. This was part criminal sting, and when the Imam and his brothers peeped the tricks of the FBI, they lured him to a warehouse and killed him. Now they accuse Imam Jamil (H. Rap Brown), who has been in prison for the past ten years, as leader of this group. He is an easy target. A lone Imam with the FBI was also an easy target. The FBI is not only tricky and devious.... they are extremely dangerous thugs and murderers."

A follow-up message added that "the FBI is known for their murderous tactics all over the world. When they are given an assignment they use every imaginative strategy to accomplish their goal. When they were under J. Edgar Hoover, he found various ways to discredit Martin Luther King... They turned the Black Stone Rangers against the Black Panthers in Chicago that (caused) the death of the (BP) leaders. They got the Huey P. Newton and Eldredge Cleaver factions to kill one another. They have gone after the so-called terrorists with one phony case after another. They first went after immigrants, decimating their numbers in America. Now they are after African-American Muslims. Next will most likely be the support groups of mostly white people... These FBI devils are very shrewd and their evil spreads... The murder of a good Muslim will only make it more dangerous to live in America. They know that black people sooner or later will fight back."

"The Ummah is not a 'brotherhood'. It is the Arabic word for 'community'. This group setting up a Muslim state? What a joke. They can hardly set up an annual conference. This information is to cause fear... to cause a backlash against Muslims.... Let the FBI continue with their tricks, lies and murder. Before long, everyone will see through their veil and they will become the target."

Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown and born Hubert Gerald Brown, became known as H. Rap Brown, a 1960s civil-rights activist, social commentator, and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (succeeding Stokely Carmichael), where he distinguished himself as a charismatic leader and effective organiser. In 1968, he was named minister of justice for the Black Panther Party for Self- Defense, which strove for ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and real economic, social and political equity across gender and colour lines in the United States.

As a result, he was targeted by US federal and state authorities, charged with inciting a riot in Maryland, violating the National Firearms Act, and illegally crossing state lines to skip bail. During his 1970 firearms trial, he disappeared for 17 months and was placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list. In late 1971, he re-emerged after being arrested and falsely charged with armed robbery in Manhattan. Convicted, he served five years in Attica State Prison.

While there, he converted to Islam and changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. After release, he started an Atlanta mosque and operated a small grocery store and community centre. Then, in 2000, he was charged with murdering a black police officer and injuring his partner in a gun battle outside his store.

In 2002, he was tried, and, despite strong evidence of his innocence, was convicted on 13 counts, including murder, aggravated assault, obstruction, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.

At trial, his lawyers argued for a case of mistaken identity, claimed prosecutors had been out to get him for decades, and presented a strong defence on his behalf, including that his fingerprints were not on the murder weapon, that he was not wounded in the incident, even though the arresting deputy said he had shot the assailant, and that the deputy had identified his eyes as grey, whereas Al-Amin's were brown.

Furthermore, the lawyers argued that Al-Amin's attire did not match clothing the shooter wore, that blood found at the scene was discounted and unchecked, that potentially exculpatory evidence relating to the sheriff's vehicle was either lost or destroyed, that a man named Otis Jackson confessed to the crime and that this was ignored and not introduced at trial. (Days later, Jackson recanted, and the defence team never had a chance to interview him).

According to Al-Amin's lawyers, the withheld evidence and proceedings were so controversial that observers believed that Al-Amin was convicted pre-trial for his civil-rights activism and conversion to Islam and was clearly a targeted man.

This became clearer when the Georgia Supreme Court agreed that the prosecution had committed a grave constitutional error when, in closing arguments, the assistant district attorney directed jurors to consider questions relating to Al-Amin's failure to present testimony or evidence, but the court nevertheless upheld the verdict.

Afterwards, Al-Amin's legal team filed a habeas corpus writ citing gross irregularities, including not investigating Otis Jackson's confession, denying a change of venue due to negative publicity, prohibiting Al-Amin from testifying in his own defence, eliminating Muslims from the jury pool, dismissing three of his four trial lawyers, prohibiting potentially exculpatory evidence from being introduced, denying favourable testimony in his behalf, withholding discovery from the defence team, denying them a chance to cross- examine an FBI agent relating to his prior misconduct against a Muslim, together with his misleading and false testimony and charges that he tampered with evidence, and inflammatory media reports during the trial, portraying Al-Amin as a radical extremist.

As a nationally known civil-rights champion and Muslim leader, Al-Amin was a prime FBI COINTELPRO target, this being the agency's infamous counterintelligence programme against political activists, legitimate dissent, independent thought, non-violent opposition to the Vietnam war and racial and social injustice.

This programme continues today against men like Abdullah, his followers and dozens more like them for their faith, ethnicity, race, activism, prominence and opposition to government injustice at the wrong time to be Muslim in America.

According to an Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) December 2007 report on Al-Amin entitled, "Prisoners of Faith Campaign Pack," many thousands of "Muslim prisoners of faith around the world" are being held in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, including politicians, human-rights activists, students, writers and others, all with one thing in common: "their adherence to the Islamic belief and way of life".

These people are portrayed as "terrorists, inciters of religious hatred, or of even trying to change the constitution of the country" where they live. They are vilified and denied their civil rights. In custody, they are neglected, brutalised, tortured and forgotten as non- persons. As one of them, Al-Amin once said, "for more than 30 years, I have been tormented and persecuted by my enemies for reasons of race and belief... I seek truth over a lie; I seek justice over injustice; I seek righteousness over the rewards of evil-doers; and I love Allah more than I love the state."

For others like him, their struggle for equity, social justice and mutual understanding persists against hostile government oppression in America as much as anywhere else. This tradition continues.

* The writer is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

‘Minorities suffering in India’ - THE NEWS INTERNATIONAL

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=172916

‘Minorities suffering in India’

Friday, April 17, 2009
By Our Correspondent

LAHORE

BRAHMANS are the biggest terrorists on this earth and they are cousins of Jews and have close collaboration with each other for disturbing the world peace through their terrorist activities.

It was the gist of the speakers’ thoughts expressed in a seminar on “Status of untouchables in India” organised on Thursday by the Centre for South Asian Studies, Punjab University, with the collaboration of Sir Ganga Ram Heritage Foundation. PU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran chaired the event. Editor Dalit Voice, Banglore, Rajshekhar, Dalit Scholar Dr SK Biswas and Dr Mujahid Kamran addressed.

Rajashekhar said that Dalits (untouchables) and Muslims were in deplorable condition in India. He said the late Dr BR Ambadkar had a great respect in India whereas some people called Ghandi Bapu of the nation, in fact, no majority or minority accepted him as Bapu.

Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran said, “Pakistan is a nuclear power and some world powers want to make us weak to weaken the Muslims of the world. We need to look after this capability so that we may be able to protect the Muslims. The youth must keep on eye on the events occurring around us. They must study deeply the events of the region and analyse the things objectively.”

Rajshekhar said that China was emerging as the biggest economical defence power of the world. He said that during one thousand years Muslim rule in India there was not a single communal riot in the subcontinent but now two percent Brahmans were ruling the country through the tactics of riots and hatred. He said Indian elections were a fraud and only a game of muscles, resources and power. He said minorities could never get proper representation through these elections.

He said that constitution gave equal rights to everyone in India but in fact there were different standard for Brahmans and other nationals. Two percent Brahmans are controlling political and economic power of the country, he said. There is not real freedom of the press and media is controlled by Brahmans, he added.

Dr Muhammad Hafiz, Director of Social and Cultural Studies, Tariq Majeed, Dr Shafiq Jullandhry and Sri Ganga Ram Heritage Foundation Director Yousaf Irfan also expressed their views.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Salute to Arnab Goswami and TIMES NOW TV - By Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, November 23, 2009

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Salute to Arnab Goswami and TIMES NOW TV

Arnab Goswami of TIMES NOW TV deserves kudos for playing a clip showing Atal Behari Vajpayee, the anointed Saint of the Sangh Parivar, gleefully regaling his audience in a meeting, one day earlier to the December 6, 1992 Babri Masjid demolition. While L. K. Advani was raising a storm under constant chant of shame, shame in the Lok Sabha in the morning, faking surprise that Atal Behari’s name has been reported to be cited as being one of the prime conspirator and master mind of Babri Masjid demolition, Arnab Goswami dug out the TV clip from OUTLOOK archives, and countered L. K. Advani in public arena. Atal Behari Vajpayee clearly said, that he was asked to go to Delhi and in fact, while the conclave disbursed in Lucknow on Dec 5, Atal Behari who was a participant, left for Delhi while others participants in BJP meeting, including L. K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti, left Lucknow for Ayodhya. Arnab Goswami’s playing of that clip was instant indictment of Vajpayee, as openly exhorting Kar Sevaks, to level the ground of the site, so that a yagya can be organised. Can there be any more proof of the guilt that surrounds Vajpayee.

Now that the leak of Liberhan Report details as published by Indian Express on its front page, has become the more important subject than the reported content of the report, Arnab Goswami’s continuous and relentless attempt to shot down deflecting arguments by BJP and Congress spokespersons on TIMES NOW panel, was a single most contribution to justice and fair play in public debate, on one of the most gruesome and sordid act of rape of India’s constitutional commitment to secularism in free India’s short history of independence.

India’s media, especially the English language media, which commands audience all over world, carries a big responsibilities to counter deliberate shenanigans by India’s notorious political class, to use matters of justice to mock the victims of their deliberate and premeditated criminal acts like the demolition of Babri Masjid and the subsequent orgy of carnage inflicted on Muslims citizens all across the land.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Sunday, November 22, 2009

A Terror Suspect With Feet in East and West By Ginger Thompson - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/us/22terror.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

A Terror Suspect With Feet in East and West

By GINGER THOMPSON

Published: November 21, 2009

PHILADELPHIA — The trip from a strict Pakistani boarding school to a bohemian bar in Philadelphia has defined David Headley’s life, according to those who know the middle-age man at the center of a global terrorism investigation.

Enlarge This Image

David Headley as a child, with his mother and younger sister.

2 in Chicago Held in Plot to Attack in Denmark (October 28, 2009)

Enlarge This Image

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

The Khyber Pass in Philadelphia, a bar that was once owned by David Headley's mother.

Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times

The business on the North Side of Chicago where Mr. Headley said he worked.

Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times

The second-floor apartment where his family lives.

Raised by his father in Pakistan as a devout Muslim, Mr. Headley arrived back here at 17 to live with his American mother, a former socialite who ran a bar called the Khyber Pass.

Today, Mr. Headley is an Islamic fundamentalist who once liked to get high. He has a traditional Pakistani wife, who lives with their children inChicago, but also an American girlfriend — a makeup artist in New York— according to a relative and friends. Depending on the setting, he alternates between the name he adopted in the United States, David Headley, and the Urdu one he was given at birth, Daood Gilani. Even his eyes — one brown, the other green — hint at roots in two places.

Mr. Headley, an American citizen, is accused of being the lead operative in a loose-knit group of militants plotting revenge against a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The indictment against him portrays a man who moved easily between different worlds. The profile that has emerged of him since his arrest, however, suggests that Mr. Headley felt pulled between two cultures and ultimately gravitated toward an extremist Islamic one.

“Some of us are saying that ‘Terrorism’ is the weapon of the cowardly,” Mr. Headley wrote in an e-mail message to his high school classmates last February. “I will say that you may call it barbaric or immoral or cruel, but never cowardly.”

He added, “Courage is, by and large, exclusive to the Muslim nation.”

Mr. Headley’s e-mail messages, including many that defended beheadings and suicide bombings as heroic, are among the evidence in the government’s case against him and his accused co-conspirator, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who was born in Pakistan, is a citizen of Canada and runs businesses in Chicago.

The men, who became close friends in a military academy outsideIslamabad, were arrested last month in Chicago. They are charged with plotting an attack they labeled the Mickey Mouse Project against Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper whose cartoons provoked outrage across the Muslim world.

Since then, the investigation has widened beyond Chicago andCopenhagen. The authorities have learned more, with cooperation from Mr. Headley, about the two men’s network of contacts with known terrorist groups, includingAl Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group, as well as officials in the Pakistani government and military. United States and Indian investigators are also looking into whether the two Chicago men, who traveled to Mumbai before the deadly assault there last November, may have been involved in the plot.

Mr. Headley, 49, and Mr. Rana, 48, stand out from the young, poor extremists from fundamentalist Islamic schools who strike targets in or close to their homelands. Instead, their privileged backgrounds, extensive travel and bouts of culture shock make them more like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, who attended college in the United States, andMohammed Atta, one of the lead hijackers.

Mr. Rana’s father is a former principal of a high school outside Lahore. One of his brothers is a Pakistani military psychiatrist who has written several books, and another is a journalist at a Canadian political newspaper, The Hill Times.

Trained as a physician, Mr. Rana immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen a few years later. Then he moved his wife and three children to Chicago, where he opened a travel agency that also provided immigration services on Devon Avenue, which cuts through the heart of the city’s Pakistani community. In 2002, he started a Halal slaughterhouse that butchers goats, sheep and cows according to Islamic religious laws.

He and his family live in a small brick house on the North Side with a huge satellite dish on the roof. Neighbors described Mr. Rana as a recluse who rarely spoke to anyone and whose children never played with others on the street.

“He seemed very committed to his Islamic religion,” said William Rodosky, who once managed Mr. Rana’s slaughterhouse, in Kinsman, Ill., about 65 miles southwest of Chicago. “He said he wanted the business so he could provide meat to his people and make a little money.”

Mr. Rodosky echoed the views of several others who knew and did business with Mr. Rana when he said he was “shocked about the terrorism charges.”

“As far as I knew, he was very nice man and a very good businessman,” Mr. Rodosky said.

But Mr. Headley did not draw the same expressions of shock. Those who knew him paint a more troubled image.

“Most people have contradictions in their lives, but they learn to reconcile them,” said William Headley, an uncle who owns a day care center inNottingham, Pa. “But Daood could never do that. The left side does not speak to the right side. And that’s the problem.”

Daood Sayed Gilani was born in Washington, where his parents worked at the Pakistani Embassy. Friends of the family said his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, a dashing diplomat and an avid musicologist and poet, charmed his way into the heart of Serrill Headley, who had left Philadelphia’s Main Line to work as a secretary at the embassy.

In 1960, the couple and their infant son, Daood, left the United States bound for England aboard the ship America, and from there went on to Lahore. But the marriage quickly soured, friends said, as Mr. Gilani immersed himself in the traditions of his homeland and his bride refused to submit to them.

After Ms. Headley left Mr. Gilani and her son and a daughter, Syedah, inPakistan, friends say, the details of her life become lost in a jumble of fact and fiction. Ms. Headley, a red-haired, green-eyed woman, told friends she married an “Afghan prince” but then had to flee Kabul after he was murdered.

She arrived back in Philadelphia, friends said, in the early 1970s, taking different office jobs and dating wealthy suitors until one of them lent her money to buy an old bar. She turned it into the Khyber Pass, decorated with billowing Afghan wedding tents and stocked with exotic beers.

In 1977, Pakistan’s government was overthrown in a military coup, and Ms. Headley, friends said, feared for her children. She traveled toPakistan, withdrew her son from the Hasan Abdal Cadet College and brought him to live with her, a move recorded by The Philadelphia Inquirer. (Her daughter, Syedah, stayed behind with her father for several years.)

“He has never been alone with, much less had a date with, a girl, except the servant girls of his household,” the article said, referring to the teenage Daood Gilani. “But he has just this day found a cricket team to join. And he has just this day, after watching American TV, said to his mother in his soft Urdu-English that she is to him like the Bionic Woman.”

According to family friends, the teenager soon rebelled against his mother’s heavy drinking and multiple sexual relationships by engaging in the same behavior.

“Those were the days when girls, weed, and whatever, were readily available,” Jay Wilson, who worked at the Khyber Pass, wrote in an e-mail message from England. “Daood was not immune to the pleasures of American adolescence.”

Later, said Lorenzo Lacovara, another former worker at the bar, Daood Gilani began expressing anger at all non-Muslims.

“He would clearly state he had contempt for infidels,” Mr. Lacovara said in a telephone interview from New Mexico. “He kept talking about the return of the 14th century, saying Islam was going to take over the world.”

Ms. Headley tried to help her son straighten out his life. In 1985, she put him in charge of the Khyber Pass, but he proved to be such a poor manager that they lost the bar a couple of years later, friends of the family said.

Ms. Headley embarked on her third marriage, and her son set off for New York, where he opened two video rental stores in Manhattan. It is unclear where he got the money to start the ventures. But court files suggest that the source may not have been entirely legal.

In 1998, Mr. Gilani, then 38, was convicted of conspiring to smuggle heroin into the country from Pakistan. Court records show that after his arrest, he provided so much information about his own involvement with drug trafficking, which stretched back more than a decade, and about his Pakistani suppliers, that he was sentenced to less than two years in jail and later went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operationsfor the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In 2006, he changed his name to David Headley, apparently to make border crossings between the United States and other countries easier, court documents say. About that time, his uncle said, he moved his family to Chicago because it had a large Muslim community and he wanted to send his four children to religious schools.

There, the family lived in a small second-floor apartment. Mr. Headley claimed to work for Mr. Rana’s immigration agency. The two men attended the Jame Masjid mosque on Fridays, then stopped at the nearby Zam Zamrestaurant to eat and talk politics. Cricket, neighbors said, was their passion.

But Mr. Headley never seemed to fully fit in. Masood Qadir, who sometimes watched cricket with him, said he was “different” and kept mostly to himself.

E-mail messages show, however, that Mr. Headley stayed in regular contact with classmates from the military high school he attended inPakistan, often engaging in impassioned debates about politics and Islam.

Earlier this year, Mr. Headley complained about “NATO criminal vermin dropping 22,000 lbs bombs on unsuspecting, unarmed Afghan villagers” or “napalming southeast Asian farmers.” Writing about Pakistan’s chief enemy, he said, “We will retaliate against India.”

And in an e-mail message defending the beheading of a Polish engineer by the Taliban in Pakistan, he wrote, “The best way for a man to die is with the sword.”

Reporting was contributed by Puk Damsgard in Islamabad, Pakistan; Emma Graves Fitzsimmons in Chicago; Nate Schweber and John Eligon in New York; and Ian Austen in Ottawa. Research was contributed by Barclay Walsh in Washington.

Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, November 30, 2009