Sunday, January 30, 2011

Why Akkalkuwa, its students rooting for ‘Bade Hazrat’ - By Ayesha Khan - The Indian Ex press, Mumbai

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/why-akkalkuwa-its-students-rooting-for-bade-hazrat/744026/0

Mon, 31 Jan 2011



Why Akkalkuwa, its students rooting for ‘Bade Hazrat’


By Ayesha Khan


Tags : nation, india, seminary, roads


Posted:
Mon Jan 31 2011, 05:43 hrs


Akkalkuwa (Nandurbar, Maharashtra):
All Roads lead to this non-descript Gujarat-Maharashtra border town. Everybody wants to meet him — the devout from the interiors of Maharashtra to some from South Africa, journalists seeking to know his views on issues ranging from the Ishrat Jehan encounter to jehad, to even the Gujarat president of the RSS-backed Rashtravadi Muslim Morcha.


In the dust-up over his election and demands for his resignation as the Deoband Darul Uloom’s Vice-Chancellor, Maulana Mohammed Vastanwi has become a much sought after man.
Few spare a glance for the Jamia Islamia Ishataul Uloom in Akkalkuwa, started originally as a seminary, that mentors an unusual educational experiment. Melding Islamic teachings with mainstream education, it takes care of the needs of 1.7 lakh students across India and even bordering Nepal. Vastanwi, or Bade Hazrat, as they call him, is central to this initiative.

Many quietly point out that in the scale of operations, it is the Akkalkuwa seminary which is larger, while Deoband’s is important for historical and religious reasons. “There are 3,000-odd students at Deoband, but here we manage 1.7 lakh students. Deoband’s importance lies in its historical influence,” says one of Vastanwi’s confidantes.

Some say that a North Indian clique, which has traditionally held sway over ulema politics in India, has now been challenged by a rank outsider — Vastanwi.

“Vastanwi has two qualities — first, his relations across India and abroad with all important seminaries and ability to collect funds; second , he is open minded, emphasising on both kinds of education, religious and mainstream,” says Maulana Habibur Rehman Matadar, who taught with Vastanwi at the Kantharia seminary.

Unlike his peers at Deoband Darul Uloom, Vastanwi does not claim any historical or academic lineage. Most of his family members in his native village of Vastan, 125 km from Akkalkuwa, are farmers. The lone Muslim family in the village, he took on the village name after he adopted Islamic education as a career.

“Our father wanted one of his sons to become aalim (theological equivalent to a post-graduate). Hazrat fulfilled that desire. He studied at Tadkeshwar Darul Uloom after his Standard 7. And now he has made it a must for every madrasa to have a primary school,” says cousin Ibrahim.

The only new buildings in the tribal town belong to engineering, pharmacy and medical colleges, and also residential complexes for students, teachers and staff of the seminary. His son and other relatives, along with orphans and children of lower middle-class Muslim families who cannot afford schooling, now study at various institutes here.

“We receive no government grant, 70 per cent of the cost is taken care of by donations, barely 25 per cent is fees from students. Donors fund the lodging, boarding, all the costs here,” points out Akbar Patel, the campus coordinator.

Explaining how he came to settle in Akkalkuwa, Vastanwi says: “While I was the Arabic teacher at Kantharia (in South Gujarat) some of my students called me to Akkalkuwa. I found Muslims here to be poor materially as well as spiritually. Elders and ulemas advised me baith jao, baith jao. And this is how I am here.”

The Akkalkuwa seminary began from a small hut in Makrani Mohalla, with Vastanwi’s elder brother Hafiz Issac starting with six students. It was in the eighties that Vastanwi shifted base from Gujarat to this Maharashtra town and has stayed put ever since.

The Deoband connection is talked about cautiously, though Vastanwi has been Darul Uloom’s governing council member for a dozen years.

The family is also cautious about another less-known connection: that Vastanwi’s daughter is married to Maulana Arshad Madani’s son. Among those Vastanwi defeated to become Darul Uloom vice-chancellor was Madani.

“Family is family. My daughter is very happy and this has nothing to do with it,” laughs Vastanwi. His relatives are more circumspect, explaining how they were opposed earlier to his move to marry his daughter to an “outsider” — meaning a North Indian. Others attest that Vastanwi preferred his son-in-law due to his education and background.

On the campuses, where there is not a single TV set, staff members, students and families catch up on the latest on Vastanwi, and express their growing exasperation with what’s happening, on computers with a broadband connection.

“My family called me up after the controversy, but we know him as a great teacher. Sometimes he drops in to teach us. This is a nice, quiet place with all amenities to learn in peace,” says Imtiaz Mohammed, who has come all the way from Poonch.

The mainstream colleges mostly have students from across Maharashtra and Gujarat, who admit that their families could not afford the fees in other regular colleges.

Beware Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood by Leslie H. Gelb - THE DAILY BEAST



Beware Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood

by Leslie H. Gelb Info
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Leslie H Gelb

As Washington reviews its policy toward Cairo this weekend, officials should think hard about fostering a Mubarak-led transition rather than one led by protesters. Plus, full coverage of the uprising in Egypt.

Difficult as it may be, let's try for an honest and realistic discussion of Egypt. Of course, the Obama administration, most Americans, most Egyptians, and I myself would prefer a democratic government in Cairo instead of President Mubarak's corrupt and repressive establishment. That's not the issue. The real issue is this: If Mubarak tumbles and if Washington uses its influence—and yes, it does have influence at approximately $3 billion in annual total aid—to push him out, what kind of government will follow his? Will it be even less democratic and more repressive? And what will be the implications for U.S. security in the region?

So, let's stop prancing around and proclaiming our devotion to peace, "universal rights" and people power. Instead, let's step back and look hard at what we know and don't know about this popular explosion in the bosom of one of America's most vital allies—and what the United States can and can't do about it.


Article - Gelb Brotherhood


The devil we know is President Mubarak. In the history of Mideast bad guys, he's far from the worst. Remember Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomenei, President Ahmadinejad, President Assad of Syria, and the many and varied leaders of Muslim terrorist groups? No sensible American would excuse Mubarak's corrupt regime—a bureaucracy that would make Kafka blush, a nasty police force, and a repressive political system. Very bad, indeed. On the plus side, he's led Egypt's economy to 6 to 7 percent real growth in past years and has conducted a foreign policy highly supportive of U.S. interests.

Most seriously, he failed to institute gradual political and economic reforms. Consequently, his nation is in flames. U.S. administrations haven't been successful in the past when they tried to push Mubarak in this direction. But it stands to reason that he might now be more amenable to reforms and transitions as long as he is not humiliated.

Now, what about the devils we know less—like the protesters? Of course, there's a slew of journalists, pundits, policy experts and professors who say these aren't devils at all, just "the people": democrats, lawyers, and college-educated and moderate women. No doubt, many of the protesters fit that description. But the dutiful press has interviewed only, say, a few hundred of these good souls. Perhaps many are not so democratic. Perhaps many are Egyptian Tea Partiers who want every Egyptian to have Islamic guns like the Founding Pharaohs. Or perhaps many are just furious and poor and unknowledgeable. My guess is no one really knows a great deal about the protesters.

It would be delusory to take the MB's democratic protestations at face value. Look at who their friends are—like Hamas.

As for most of the other "devils," they are pretty well known. One leadership candidate, of course, is Mohamed ElBaradei, the former U.N. chief nuclear inspector and a good man. But he has almost no constituency inside Egypt, where he's spent little time in recent years. The people aren't going to give him power, and he probably wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. But he could be part of a future government in an ideal world.

The other "devil," now being proclaimed as misunderstood Islamic democrats, is the Muslim Brotherhood, and they should give us great pause. Baloney and wishful thinking aside, the MB would be calamitous for U.S. security. What's more, their current defenders don't really argue that point, as much as they seem to dismiss it as not important or something we can live with. The MB supports Hamas and other terrorist groups, makes friendly noises to Iranian dictators and torturers, would be uncertain landlords of the critical Suez Canal, and opposes the Egyptian-Israeli agreement of 1979, widely regarded as the foundation of peace in the Mideast. Above all, the MB would endanger counter-terrorism efforts in the region and worldwide. That is a very big deal.

As for the MB's domestic democratic credentials, let me show some restraint here. To begin with, no one really has any sound idea of how they might rule; they haven't gotten close enough to power to fully judge. But they'd be bad for non-orthodox Islamic women.

And while MB leaders profess support for democracy and free speech, my mother's response still holds: "They would say that, wouldn't they?" What I see is that they've quieted their usual inflammatory rhetoric in return for Mubarak not banning them. It would be delusory to take the MB's democratic protestations at face value. Look at who their friends are—like Hamas.

The real danger is that our experts, pundits and professors will talk the Arab and American worlds into believing we can all trust the MB. And that's dangerous because, outside of the government, the MB is the only organized political force, the only group capable of taking power. And if they do gain control, it's going to be almost impossible for the people to take it back. Just look at Iran.

For the record, I am not saying that Arabs or Muslims are incapable of democracy. I am most certainly saying that Arabs, Muslims, or anyone else would find it almost impossible to establish a stable democracy out of chaos and years of corruption and injustice.

The Egyptian Army is another power alternative. And it's possible they could provide a bridge to a future civilian democratic government in Cairo. All we know here is that they've kept their noses out of politics and are thought to be generally loyal to Mubarak. The United States could help persuade the parties—if asked to play that role by the military, Mubarak officials, and "the people."

Now, a final word about America's power in this situation. We haven't got any power to shape events. But that does not mean we are without influence. We have influence by virtue of the billions in aid we provide annually, by dint of years of positive contacts with the Egyptian government and business people, and the like. This means something. If the Obama administration leans to the protesters, that would embolden the protesters and demoralize Mubarak supporters. And mind you, those Americans screaming to support "the people" should understand that no matter how much President Obama sides with "the people," few of them will thank him or America for it. And our soothsayers should also understand that when our other Arab friends watch us help remove Mubarak from power by not backing him, they'll believe that they'll be next on the list if they run into trouble. U.S. power would crumble in the region.

In these circumstances, the least problematic of U.S. policies are as follows:

1. Call on all sides to restore order and stability—with as much restraint on government force as possible. Little or nothing can get done if the killings mount. Under present circumstances, Mubarak won't compromise, and if he did, "the people" would only demand more. And everything would fly out of control again. The Army is best positioned to do what's necessary here, including using minimum necessary force.

2. Shut up publicly as much as possible and use American influence privately to guide Mubarak toward a power transition "he could be proud of." He can't stay in office for long, but he can go in a way that befits a strong ally and allows for a legacy he can be proud of. (And by the way, the White House should also stop threatening publicly to cut off aid to his government. Make such points in private.)

3. Bring in Egyptian voices and others respected by them to speak truth to the people. Tell them it will take years to fix Egypt's mountain of problems. Urge them to say that the start would be a coalition government with Mubarak as president for as short a period as possible and no more than a year, followed by elections supervised by the United Nations.

After a daylong meeting on Saturday, the White House decided to lean in this direction—i.e., away from the protesters and toward Mubarak. But according to officials, Obama will not be saying so explicitly.
Our foremost fear should be an abrupt change of power or chaos that will benefit only extremists. Our foremost worry should be self-delusion.


Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com


Why is America so afraid? - By Philip Weiss - SALON

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Obama's Administration has opened a Pandora's Box, trying to carry forward former US President George W. Bush's neo-con dictated strategy to impose American hegemony on Arab World under the pretext of promoting democracy. Israel boasts day in and day out that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Bush had declared that democracy ensures that democrats do not wage war. (He was so dense that he could not make out that even his own US being a democracy, had given the world nothing but wars and more wars.). According to a Telegraph (UK) report, US state department through its embassy in Cairo had been training an Egyptian activist to prepare the ground for a people's revolution in Egypt to bring in a regime change. Now US is having second thoughts as there is every possibility that with democracy, Muslim Brotherhood may take over Egypt, the key nation in Arab World. US may be prepared to do business with Muslim Brotherhood, but Israel gets nightmare when Muslim Brotherhood is even mentioned as a legitimate political movement.

It hardly enters the current discourse as to the worth of democracy in Egypt or any other nation in the world, where a foreign power has so much leverage to decide who should rule the country.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

----------


Saturday, Jan 29, 2011 17:30 ET

Why is America so afraid?

By Philip Weiss
Why is America so afraid?
YouTube/liuqahs15

I'm as thrilled as anyone by what I see in the Cairo streets, but when I turn on American television I see only grim faces. Robert Gibbs looked frightened during his delayed press briefing yesterday afternoon; he didn't know what to say. Obama's comments last night were equivocal and opaque: I'm with Mubarak, for now. This is his 9/11 -- the day Arabs blindsided a president.

I thought this is what he wanted for the Arab world: democracy! But the market dropped, and the cable shows are filled with mistrust of the Arab street. Our talking heads can't stop talking about the Islamists. Chris Matthews cried out against the Muslim Brotherhood and shouted, Who is our guy here? -- as if the U.S. can play a hand on the streets. While his guest Marc Ginsberg, a former ambassador to Morocco whose work seems to be dedicated to finding the few good Arabs out there, said that forces outside Egypt are funding the revolt -- a grotesque statement, given the homegrown flavor of everything we have seen in the streets; and when Matthews pressed him, Ginsberg said, Hamas... Iran.

Matthews's other interpreter was Howard Fineman. Why aren't there more Arab-Americans on U.S. television? I give PBS credit for gathering Mary-Jane Deeb and Samer Shehata (along with the inevitable Steven Cook of CFR) to speak of the real political demands of the protesters (and not galloping Islamism!)-- but when CNN aired Mona Eltahawy saying that the protesters are not violent, the moderator stomped on her and said, what about those burning vehicles?

As if eastern Europe changed without similar destruction.

So racism against Arabs is shutting down the American mind once again. And all my friends must turn to Al Jazeera English to get the soul of the story: that these events are electrifying to Arabs everywhere, a heroic mobilization. And not only to Arabs. When ElBaradei says, I salute the youth for overturning a pharaonic power, lovers of human freedom everywhere must be thrilled. We are seeing a dictator dissolve before our eyes. These are the events we cherished in history books; let us embrace the Egyptian movement.

Why is America so afraid?

Because we are seeing a giant leap in Arab power, in which the people of the largest Arab nation demand that they be allowed to fulfill their potential. This change portends a huge shift in the balance of power in the region. For the U.S. has played only a negative role in the Egyptian advance, supplying the teargas, and it seems inevitable that Egypt will cease to be a client state to the U.S. And thereby threaten the order of the last 30 years.

Whatever government replaces the current one in Egypt, it will not serve American interests, which have been largely defined by Israel, the American-Israeli "imperium," as Helena Cobban put it. Since the 1970s (as Joel Beinin shows here), Egypt has been the lynchpin of a US strategy of supporting Israel. The special relationship with Israel has steered our foreign policy, encouraged the destruction and occupation of Iraq, and even fed American Islamophobia. Key to preserving this order has been our ironclad support for the Arab dictatorships in Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere-- by providing the policy with a "moderate Arab" seal. Hey Egypt was a bulwark against the Islamists, and Egypt was crucial to the peace process, as all the correspondents tell us on American TV.

The danger to America and Israel is that the Egyptian revolution will destroy this false choice of secular dictator-or-crazy Islamists by showing that Arabs are smart articulate people who can handle real democracy if they get to make it themselves. And when they get it, they are likely to strip the mask off the peace process. On Al Jazeera English, there is much talk about the Palestinians. One commentator said that the "humiliation" of the Palestinians is feeding the Egyptian revolt. (I will never forget how Egyptian construction workers put down their tools to stand and applaud the Code Pink buses as we left El Arish for Gaza in June 2009.) And in his beautiful statement calling on Mubarak to serve his country by leaving, ElBaradei said that a government that heeds the people's will would turn soon to the Palestinian issue.

This is the great fear, in Israel and in Washington, too: that revolution in Egypt will reveal the despotism of the existing order for the Palestinian people, who have seen their rights and properties and security and water taken from them during the peace process that Egypt has helped sustain.

The grimness on the faces of American Establishment figures reflects the greatest threat to authority, the crumbling of an existing order. Support for Israel has defined order in this region for decades and steered our support for dictators. Ever since Truman defied the State Department in 1947-48, we have been committed to maintaining a Jewish state in the Middle East despite local opposition. This has required great American expenditure, and probably cost Bobby Kennedy his life, but it has been an order. That order has required lip service to Arab democracy, but hey, Mubarak is better than those Islamists.

Now that true Arab democracy is finally coming on stage, that moral structure falls apart. I say morals, because support for Israel has always had a moral rationale. The American establishment felt good about our support for Israel because it seemed like the right thing: We had helped to solve the age-old Jewish Question of Europe. We had ended Jewish persecution. Israel was the answer to Never again! If you doubt that this is the moral calculus of our policy, step into the Center for Jewish History in New York this month. There must be four or five exhibits that touch on Jewish persecution in the Middle East and Europe. The destruction of Italian Jews. The destruction of Berlin businesses that provided the finest linens, photography, interiors... The persecution of Moroccan Jews. It never ends, along with an exhibit dedicated to the "miracle" of Israel's creation with American Jewish support.

Thus the Jewish community has hunkered down in an anachronistic identity-- secure in the completely-contradictory knowledge that the American power structure will support Israel.
All this is changing in Egypt. An Arab liberation story is forcing itself into world consciousness. 

"The vast, vast majority of protesters are peaceful people, mostly middle class, and they are showing great solidarity. People are still defending the Egyptian Museum," Issandr El-Amrani reports, inspiringly. There is bound to be great suffering in Egypt, we pray for a smooth transition, but if the Egyptians are only left to handle their own affairs, who doubts that the polity that will emerge from this chaos will be more responsive to human rights, and will strike a blow against the fetters of anti-Arab racism that have chained the American mind.

Philip Weiss is the co-editor of " The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict ."

Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising - The Telegraph. UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8289686/Egypt-protests-Americas-secret-backing-for-rebel-leaders-behind-uprising.html

Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising

The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned.


By Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swinford 9:23PM GMT 28 Jan 2011  
1323 Comments

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.
On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.

He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph.

The crisis in Egypt follows the toppling of Tunisian president Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the country after widespread protests forced him from office.

The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.

Mr Mubarak, facing the biggest challenge to his authority in his 31 years in power, ordered the army on to the streets of Cairo yesterday as rioting erupted across Egypt.

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets in open defiance of a curfew. An explosion rocked the centre of Cairo as thousands defied orders to return to their homes. As the violence escalated, flames could be seen near the headquarters of the governing National Democratic Party.

Police fired rubber bullets and used tear gas and water cannon in an attempt to disperse the crowds.
At least five people were killed in Cairo alone yesterday and 870 injured, several with bullet wounds. Mohamed ElBaradei, the pro-reform leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was placed under house arrest after returning to Egypt to join the dissidents. Riots also took place in Suez, Alexandria and other major cities across the country.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, urged the Egyptian government to heed the “legitimate demands of protesters”. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said she was “deeply concerned about the use of force” to quell the protests.

In an interview for the American news channel CNN, to be broadcast tomorrow, David Cameron said: “I think what we need is reform in Egypt. I mean, we support reform and progress in the greater strengthening of the democracy and civil rights and the rule of law.”

The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East.

In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year.

The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.”
It said the activist claimed “several opposition forces” had “agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections”. The embassy’s source said the plan was “so sensitive it cannot be written down”.

Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organised by the US State Department.

Cairo embassy officials warned Washington that the activist’s identity must be kept secret because he could face “retribution” when he returned to Egypt. He had already allegedly been tortured for three days by Egyptian state security after he was arrested for taking part in a protest some years earlier.

The protests in Egypt are being driven by the April 6 youth movement, a group on Facebook that has attracted mainly young and educated members opposed to Mr Mubarak. The group has about 70,000 members and uses social networking sites to orchestrate protests and report on their activities.

The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information about human rights abuses.