Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Kashmir has never been part of India: Arundhati Roy
<a href="http://www.srai.org/kashmir-has-never-been-part-of-india-arundhati-roy/" title="Kashmir has never been part
of India: Arundhati Roy">Kashmir has never been part of India: Arundhati Roy</a>
of India: Arundhati Roy">Kashmir has never been part of India: Arundhati Roy</a>
Friday, August 26, 2016
Court Suspends ‘Burkini’ Ban in French Town By AURELIEN BREEDEN AUG. 26, 2016 - The New York Times
EUROPE
Court Suspends ‘Burkini’ Ban in French Town
By AURELIEN BREEDEN
PARIS — France’s highest administrative court on Friday suspended a ban by a Mediterranean town on bathing at its beaches in so-called burkinis, the full-body swimwear used by some Muslim women that has become the focus of intense debates over women’s rights, assimilation and secularism in France.
The Council of State, the highest court in the French administrative justice system, ruled that the ban, enacted by the town of Villeneuve-Loubet on Aug. 5, violated civil liberties.
At least 20 other municipalities, most of which are on the French Riviera, have imposed similar bans, and although the decision on Tuesday does not apply directly to them, it is seen as a test case.
Critics of the bans have said they unfairly targeted Muslims and stirred up fear in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks in France and elsewhere in Europe.
The bans recently provoked a backlash in France and abroad, after photographs spread online showing armed police officers enforcing them.
The bans have also fueled an intense political debate and split the French government, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressing support for them and several female ministers opposing the restrictions, even as they expressed distaste for the garments.
Anti-discrimination and human rights groups challenged the restrictions in local courts, but the rules were upheld, leading the groups to appeal to the Council of State, which heard arguments from lawyers on both sides on Thursday.
Villeneuve-Loubet, a seaside resort of about 14,000, is between the larger cities of Nice and Cannes, where the first ban was enacted in July. Most of the prohibitions are temporary and run until the end of the holiday season. The restrictions in Villeneuve-Loubet end on Sept. 15.
The ordinances target bathing attire that is not “appropriate,” that is not “respectful of good morals and of secularism,” and that does not respect “hygiene and security rules.”
The wording makes no mention of a specific religion or type of clothing, but it is widely perceived to be aimed at Muslim women who are trying to dress modestly while at the beach.
The mayors of the towns with such prohibitions have argued that burkinis pose a threat to public order after multiple terrorist attacks in France in the past months, including one in Nice on July 14 that killed 86 people.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
My Ahmedabad presentation – Genesis and impact
My Ahmedabad presentation – Genesis and impact: By Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood, Saffron approach By the ninth decade of the twentieth century the Hindu rightist political grouping of India had decided that for the purpose of quickly catapulting...
Monday, August 22, 2016
Monday, August 8, 2016
Pope Francis Equates Muslim and Christian Violence
Pope Francis Equates Muslim and Christian Violence
 |
Originally published under the title "Pope Francis: A Fool or Liar for Islam?"
At a time when Muslims all around the world are terrorizing and slaughtering non-Muslims in the name of Islam, Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, continues trying to distance Islam from violence.
Last Sunday a journalist asked him about the recent and "barbarous assassination of Fr. Jacques Hamel" in France, and how the priest was clearly "killed in the name of Islam." To this Francis
Yes, Catholics—and people of all religions, sects, creeds—commit violence. That is because humans are prone to violence (or, to use Christian language that some—maybe not Francis—might understand, humans are fallen creatures). And yes, the Catholics that Francis cites do not commit crimes—murdering girlfriends and mothers-in-law—because of any teaching contained in Christianity or Catholicism; on the contrary, Christian teachings of mercy and forgiveness are meant to counter such impulses.
On the other hand, the violence that Muslims are committing around the world—the beheadings, the sex slavery, the church burnings—are indeed contained in and a product of Islam, and they have been from day one.
Francis continued offering half-truths in the interview. After he acknowledged that there are "violent persons of this religion [Islam]," he immediately added that "in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them."
This is another sloppy generalization. Sure, "in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists," but that which is "fundamental" to them widely differs. One may say that Muslim and Christian fundamentalists adhere to a literalist/strict reading of their scriptures. While that statement may be true, left unsaid by those who think the issue is settled right there is: what do the Bible and Koran actually teach?
The long and short of it is, the Christian fundamentalist will find himself compelled to pray for his persecutors, and, depending on the situation, maybe even turning the other cheek; conversely, the Muslim fundamentalist will find himself attacking, subjugating, plundering, raping, enslaving, and slaughtering non-Muslims. In both cases, the scriptures—Bible and Koran—say so.
Not for Francis. Poverty is supposedly the real reason behind all the Islamic violence plaguing the world:
But apparently none of these questions about scriptures and demographics matter; after all, Francis "knows how Muslims think":
But back home in Egypt, the grand imam and Al Azhar promote an Islam that is virtually indistinguishable from that of ISIS. Indeed, days before he went to take pictures hugging the pope, Tayeb said that it is a criminal offense to apostatize from Islam, and the punishment is death.
In response, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies blasted the grand imam and Al Azhar. After accusing them of being twofaced—preaching a moderate Islam in the West and a radical one in Egypt—the statement concluded with some words that people like Francis should take to heart:
At a time when Muslims all around the world are terrorizing and slaughtering non-Muslims in the name of Islam, Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, continues trying to distance Islam from violence.
Last Sunday a journalist asked him about the recent and "barbarous assassination of Fr. Jacques Hamel" in France, and how the priest was clearly "killed in the name of Islam." To this Francis
replied that he doesn't like speaking about Islamic violence because there is plenty of Christian violence as well... [He] said that every day when he browses the newspapers, he sees violence in Italy perpetrated by Christians: "this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law... and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence. And no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there's everything."Is the Pope really that dense? Is he incapable of distinguishing between violence committed in the name of a religion, and violence committed in contradiction of a religion?
Yes, Catholics—and people of all religions, sects, creeds—commit violence. That is because humans are prone to violence (or, to use Christian language that some—maybe not Francis—might understand, humans are fallen creatures). And yes, the Catholics that Francis cites do not commit crimes—murdering girlfriends and mothers-in-law—because of any teaching contained in Christianity or Catholicism; on the contrary, Christian teachings of mercy and forgiveness are meant to counter such impulses.
Pope Francis conflates violence committed in the name of a religion with violence committed in contradiction of a religion.
|
Francis continued offering half-truths in the interview. After he acknowledged that there are "violent persons of this religion [Islam]," he immediately added that "in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them."
This is another sloppy generalization. Sure, "in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists," but that which is "fundamental" to them widely differs. One may say that Muslim and Christian fundamentalists adhere to a literalist/strict reading of their scriptures. While that statement may be true, left unsaid by those who think the issue is settled right there is: what do the Bible and Koran actually teach?
The long and short of it is, the Christian fundamentalist will find himself compelled to pray for his persecutors, and, depending on the situation, maybe even turning the other cheek; conversely, the Muslim fundamentalist will find himself attacking, subjugating, plundering, raping, enslaving, and slaughtering non-Muslims. In both cases, the scriptures—Bible and Koran—say so.
Not for Francis. Poverty is supposedly the real reason behind all the Islamic violence plaguing the world:
Terrorism grows when there are no other options, and when the center of the global economy is the god of money and not the person — men and women — this is already the first terrorism! You have cast out the wonder of creation — man and woman — and you have put money in its place. This is a basic terrorism against all of humanity! Think about it!This has got to be one of the silliest arguments ever devised to justify terrorism. So the Muslims screaming "Allahu Akbar!" while slaughtering a priest or driving a truck into people in France were suffering from poverty? What about the fact that one of the richest nations in the world—Saudi Arabia—is violent to and intolerant of non-Muslims? What about the fact that there are billions of impoverished non-Muslims—yet, strangely, they do not engage in wanton acts of terror against "infidels" in the name of their religion. What to make of these facts?
But apparently none of these questions about scriptures and demographics matter; after all, Francis "knows how Muslims think":
I had a long conversation with the imam, the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar University, and I know how they think. They [Muslims] seek peace, encounter.This is just plain sad. Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, arguably the most authoritative Islamic institution in the world, did indeed recently visit Francis and inform him of how Muslims desire peace and harmony with the world.
But back home in Egypt, the grand imam and Al Azhar promote an Islam that is virtually indistinguishable from that of ISIS. Indeed, days before he went to take pictures hugging the pope, Tayeb said that it is a criminal offense to apostatize from Islam, and the punishment is death.
In response, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies blasted the grand imam and Al Azhar. After accusing them of being twofaced—preaching a moderate Islam in the West and a radical one in Egypt—the statement concluded with some words that people like Francis should take to heart:
Combating terrorism and radical religious ideologies will not be accomplished by directing at the West and its international institutions religious dialogues that are open, support international peace and respect freedoms and rights, while internally promoting ideas that contribute to the dissemination of violent extremism through the media and educational curricula of Al Azhar and the mosques.In the end, and when it comes to the question of whether Islam promotes violence against non-Muslims, Pope Francis falls within the ranks of those Western leaders who are either liars or fools, or a little bit of both.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Judaism is not a major
player in the history of humankind
One of the
most important and most beautiful values of Judaism is modesty. We would do
well to take this value to heart when considering the religion's impact on
humankind through the ages.
By
Yuval Noah Harari
It is certainly true that Judaism
begot Christianity, and influenced the birth of Islam – two of the most
important religions in history. However, the credit for the global achievements
of Christianity and Islam, as well as the guilt for their many crimes, belongs
to the Christians and Muslims themselves, rather than to the Jews. Just as it
would be unfair to blame Judaism for the mass killings of the Crusades
(Christianity is 100 percent culpable), so also there is no reason to credit
Judaism with the critical Christian idea that all human beings are equal before
God (an idea that stands in direct contradiction to Jewish orthodoxy).
The role of Judaism in the history
of humankind is a bit like the role of Newton’s mother in the history of
science. It is true that without Newton’s mother, we wouldn’t have had Newton,
and that Newton’s personality, ambitions and opinions were likely shaped to a
significant extent by his relations with his mother. But when writing the
history of science, nobody expects an entire chapter on Newton’s mother.
Similarly, without Judaism you would not have had Christianity, but that
doesn’t merit giving much importance to Judaism when writing the history of the
world. The crucial issue is what Christianity did with its Jewish legacy.
It goes without saying that the
Jewish people is a unique people with an astonishing history (though this is
true of most peoples). It similarly goes without saying that the Jewish
tradition is full of deep insights and noble values (though it is also full of
some questionable ideas and of racist, misogynist and homophobic attitudes). It
is further true that, relative to its size, the Jewish people has had a
disproportional impact on the history of the last 2,000 years. But when you
look at the big picture of our history as a species, since the emergence of
Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago, it is obvious that the Jewish
contribution to history was very limited. Humans settled the entire planet,
adopted agriculture, built the first cities, and invented writing and money
thousands of years before the appearance of Judaism.
Even in the last two millennia, if
you look at history from the perspective of the Chinese or of the Native
American Indians, it is hard to see any major Jewish contribution except through
the mediation of Christians or Muslims. Thus the Hebrew Bible eventually became
a cornerstone of global human culture because it was warmly embraced by
Christianity. In contrast, the Talmud – whose importance to Jewish culture
surpasses that of the Bible – was rejected by Christianity, and consequently
remained an esoteric text hardly known to the Arabs, Poles or Dutch, not to
mention the Chinese and the Maya. Though Jewish communities that studied the
Talmud spread over large parts of the world, they did not play a key role in
the building of the Chinese empires, in the early modern voyages of discovery,
in the establishment of the democratic system, or in the Industrial Revolution.
The coin, the university, the parliament, the bank, the compass, the printing
press and the steam engine were all invented by gentiles.
Ethics before the Bible
Stone Age hunter-gatherer tribes
had moral codes tens of thousands of years before Abraham. When the first
European settlers reached Australia in the late 18th century, they encountered
aboriginal tribes that had a well-developed ethical worldview despite being
totally ignorant of Moses, Jesus or Mohammed. Indeed, scientists nowadays point
out that morality has evolutionary roots, and that it is present among most
social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins and monkeys. For example, when wolf
cubs play with one another, they have “fair game” rules. If a cub bites too
hard, or continues to bite an opponent that has rolled on his back and
surrendered, the other cubs will stop playing with him.
In one hilarious experiment, the
primatologist Frans de Waal placed two capuchin monkeys in two adjacent cages,
so that each could see everything the other was doing. De Waal and his colleagues
placed small stones inside each cage, and trained the monkeys to give them
these stones. Whenever a monkey handed over a stone, he received food in
exchange. At first the reward was a piece of cucumber. Both monkeys were very
pleased with that, and happily ate their cucumber.
After a few rounds, de Waal moved
to the next stage of the experiment. This time, when the first monkey
surrendered a stone, he got a grape. Grapes are much more tasty than cucumbers.
However, when the second monkey turned over a stone, he still received only a
piece of cucumber.
The second monkey, who had
previously been very happy with his cucumber, became incensed. He took the
cucumber, looked at it for a moment in disbelief, and then threw it at the
scientists in anger, jumping and screeching. He’s no sucker. Equality and
social justice were central values in capuchin monkey society hundreds of
thousands of years before the prophet Amos complained about social elites “who
oppress the poor and crush the needy” (Amos 4:1), and before the prophet
Jeremiah preached, “do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow”
(Jeremiah 7:6).
Meanwhile in Egypt – centuries
before the birth of Moses – scribes wrote down “the story of the eloquent
peasant,” which tells of a poor peasant whose property was stolen by a greedy
landowner. The peasant came before Pharaoh’s corrupt officials, and when they
failed to protect him, he began explaining to them why they must provide
justice and in particular defend the poor from the rich. In one colorful
allegory, this Egyptian peasant explained that the meager possessions of the
poor are like their very breath, and official corruption suffocates them by
plugging the passage through their nostrils.
Many biblical laws copy rules that
were accepted in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Canaan centuries and even millennia
prior to the establishment of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. If biblical
Judaism gave these laws any unique twist, it was by turning them from universal
rulings into tribal codes aimed primarily at the Jewish people.
Jewish morality was initially
shaped as an exclusive tribal affair, and remained so to some extent until the
21st century. The Bible, the Talmud and many though not all rabbis maintained
that the life of a Jew is more valuable than the life of a gentile, which is
why, for example, Jews are allowed to desecrate the Shabbat in order to save a
Jew from death, but are forbidden to do so if it is merely to save a gentile
(Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, 84:2).
Some Jewish sages argued that even
the famous commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself” refers only to Jews,
and there is no commandment to love gentiles. Indeed, the original text from
Leviticus says: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your
people, but love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), which raises the
suspicion that “your neighbor” refers only to members of “your people.”
It was only the Christians who
selected some choice morsels of the Jewish moral code, turned them into
universal commandments, and spread them throughout the world. Indeed,
Christianity split from Judaism precisely on that account. While many Jews to
this day believe that the so-called “Chosen People” are closer to God than
other nations are, the founder of Christianity – Saint Paul the Apostle –
stipulated in his famous Epistle to the Galatians that “there is neither Jew
nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are
all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
And we must again emphasize that
despite the enormous impact of Christianity, this was definitely not the first
time a human preached a universal ethic. The Bible is far from being the
exclusive font of human morality (and luckily so, given the many racist, misogynist
and homophobic attitudes it contains). Confucius, Laozi, Buddha and Mahavira
established universal ethical codes long before Paul and Jesus, without knowing
anything about the land of Canaan or the prophets of Israel. Confucius taught
that every person must love others as he loves himself about 500 years before
Rabbi Hillel the Elder. And at a time when Judaism still mandated the sacrifice
of animals and the systematic extermination of entire human populations (the
Amalekites and Canaanites), Buddha and Mahavira already instructed their
followers to avoid harming not only all human beings, but any sentient beings
whatsoever, including insects.
Jewish physics, Christian biology
How Germans handle terror - Pure reason - The Economist
It took rather long time for the public to caught on to the games politicians play and that involve human lives of their own compatriots. Slowly the paid and organised media facing tough competition from social media has been leaking information that exposes the dirty tricks the politicians unleash to keep their leash on power and on people. Most prominent is the media game are the Jewish media barons, who have made a big propaganda of Islamic terror. They teamed with the politicians who were not averse to stage terror incidents around the world through their willing or most of the time their black-mailed proxies, to hold an entire Muslim community of one billion people hostage to collective sin of terror and therefor fit for collective punishments. It would appear the US President Obama was the first to differentiate between the Muslim terror accused and the entire Muslim people as well as Islam as two separate subjects. Media did take the cue and now in Germany, we see such terror incidents are not creating the mass hysteria that the Jewish media was in the forefront to create out of lone wolf terror attacks. This is a big change. And time all those conspirators in paid media and social media are expose, so that general public heaves a sigh of relief from this organised scare-mongering that had a chain reaction as its ultimate goal.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
---
In the face of a rash of attacks, Germans are staying remarkably calm
ASK some Germans how people should react to terrorism and most would probably agree with the historian Herfried Münkler that the best attitude is heroische Gelassenheit: heroic calmness. Let other countries declare wars on terrorism and near-permanent states of emergency, they say; Germany’s dark history has taught it not to over-react. Sceptics used to reply that talk was cheap coming from Germany, which had been spared major incidents of the sort that have struck America, France, Turkey and other countries. That changed in the space of one week this month, when Germany suffered four very different attacks.
First, on July 18th, an Afghan refugee stabbed and axed four passengers on a train and another on a platform. Four days later a German teenager of Iranian descent went on a rampage in a shopping centre in Munich (pictured), injuring more than 30 people and killing nine before shooting himself. Two days after that, a Syrian refugee hacked a pregnant woman to death with a machete—“relationship troubles”, the police said. Elsewhere that night another Syrian refugee tried to enter a concert with a backpack of explosives. When he was barred, he blew himself up, injuring 15 others.
In this section
- Pure reason
Related topics
Germans grew more jittery with each round of breaking news. There was a brief panic during the initial hours of the Munich rampage, as rumours spread on social media that three killers were on the loose rather than just one. Munich’s 2,300 police were inundated with 4,300 emergency calls, almost all of them false.
But Munich quickly recovered its poise. Under the hashtag #OffeneTuer (“#OpenDoor”), residents offered to accommodate anyone stranded for the night by the lock-down. Munich’s police spokesperson, Marcus da Gloria Martins, laboured tirelessly to sort fact from fiction. Mr da Gloria Martins, who wrote a thesis on crisis communication, ultimately became the country’s hero of the week. On a television talk show, he appealed to the audience and media: “Give us the chance to report facts. Don’t speculate, don’t copy from each other.” It was the biggest applause line of the night.
Most politicians heeded his advice, distinguishing carefully between the issues at play in different killings. The week’s worst disaster, in Munich, had nothing to do with Islamism. The 18-year-old gunman, David Ali Sonboly, had been bullied and suffered from depression, and had prepared his rampage for a year. He had read “Why Kids Kill” by Peter Langman, an American expert on school shootings. In 2015 he visited Winnenden, a town in Germany where a school mass shooting took place in 2009. He executed his attack on the fifth anniversary of the massacre by Anders Breivik on the Norwegian island of Utoya.
Mr Sonboly’s case opened many debates. He had played “Counter-Strike”, a violent computer game also favoured by other shooters. Should such games be banned? The consensus seemed to be no; that would curtail liberty and be unfair on the majority of players who never become violent. Should Germany deploy its army in domestic emergencies such as this? Some, including Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said yes. Others pointed to Germany’s Nazi-era history and remained wary.
Mr Sonboly had used a contraband Glock 17, the type of gun also preferred by the killers at Utoya and Winnenden. Should Germany’s gun laws be tightened? No, the consensus suggested; Germany already has some of the strictest laws in the world. Mr Sonboly had bought his gun illegally from Slovakia through the “dark net”, an encrypted portion of the internet. The weapon had been disabled for use as a stage prop; Mr Sonboly or someone else later restored it to shoot live rounds.
Public discussion of the other three attackers was equally mature. All were refugees from war-torn countries and probably traumatised. Two of them—the axeman on the train and the backpack bomber at the concert—acted in the name of Islamic State (IS). The former, an unaccompanied minor from Afghanistan, was only 17 years old. The latter, a Syrian nicknamed Rambo at his refugee centre, had been denied asylum and was to be deported to Bulgaria. He had already been in psychiatric treatment and twice tried to commit suicide.
Some worried that IS might have smuggled in terrorists amid the refugees who have arrived in Germany in recent years—about 1m last year alone. Germany is investigating 59 such cases, said Thomas de Maizière, the interior minister. (There are 708 other investigations into possible Islamist terrorist plots, involving more than 1,000 suspects.) But he cautioned that the vast majority of refugees are peaceful victims, rather than perpetrators, of terror. Most Germans agreed that refugees, especially the young and traumatised, should receive better counselling and supervision.
Only a few tried to make hay of the tragedies. During the Munich rampage, André Poggenburg, a leader of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, tried to blame the open-door refugee policy of chancellor Angela Merkel—even before anyone knew who was shooting. “Our sympathy for the wounded and the bereaved, our disgust for the Merkelites and leftwing idiots who bear responsibility!” he tweeted. He earned immediate condemnation on social and broadcast media, followed by ridicule once it emerged that the shooter was German. Then the country went on being heroically calm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)