Thursday, August 19, 2010
Letter to the editor
The New York Times, NY, NY
editorial@nytimes.com.
RE: Willaim Dalrymple's article - Muslims in the middle
William Dalrymple has missed the point by writing about the Sufis and differences in Islamic communities. He should have focused on the bigger picture of how 9/11 is being converted into a new religion promoted by Republicans and American Neo-con. If there is no quarter granted to Islam itself, what defending Sufism can achieve against the die hard mischief mongers who are bent on hijacking the mosque issue to de-legitimize the entire Muslim Americans' very existence in the US. A scholar like him, should have realized if the situation requires defending Islam/Sufism or focusing on the menacing agenda of the fascist forces that are on the ascendant in America.
Dalrymple writes: The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan.
So far so good! However, his analysis of differences in both sides misses the 800 pound gorilla in the discussion, as to the motive of such virulent and vigorous confrontation. When he writes that if Bush had known about the finer details of the fractures in Muslim polity, he naively believes that Bush has invaded Iraq for reasons other than for its oil resources. Bush can fool the entire world, but if an intelligent scholar like Dalrymple too falls for Bush propaganda, other mortals must be excused.
Ghulam Muhammed
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17dalrymple.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Op-Ed Contributor
The Muslims in the Middle
By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
Published: August 16, 2010
comments (319)
New Delhi
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.
We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.
Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”
The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.
Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.
For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.
The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.
While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.
This was only the latest in a series of assaults against Pakistan’s Sufis. In May, Peeru’s Cafe in Lahore, a cultural center where I had recently performed with a troupe of Sufi musicians, was bombed in the middle of its annual festival. An important site in a tribal area of the northwest — the tomb of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a Sufi persecuted under British colonial rule for his social work — has been forcibly turned into a Taliban headquarters. Two shrines near Peshawar, the mausoleum of Bahadar Baba and the shrine of Abu Saeed Baba, have been destroyed by rocket fire.
Symbolically, however, the most devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”
THEN, about a decade ago, a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrasa, was built at the end of the path leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they see as the un-Islamic practices of Rahman Baba’s admirers. When I last visited it in 2003, the shrine-keeper, Tila Mohammed, described how young students were coming regularly to complain that his shrine was a center of idolatry and immorality.
“My family have been singing here for generations,” he told me. “But now these madrasa students come and tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women to stay at home. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems.”
Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine’s dome. In the ensuing explosion, the mausoleum was destroyed, but at least nobody was killed. The Pakistani Taliban quickly took credit, blaming the shrine’s administrators for allowing women to pray and seek healing there.
The good news is that Sufis, though mild, are also resilient. While the Wahhabis have become dominant in northern Pakistan ever since we chose to finance their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, things are different in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Sufis are putting up a strong resistance on behalf of the pluralist, composite culture that emerged in the course of a thousand years of cohabitation between Hinduism and Islam.
Last year, when I visited a shrine of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan, I was astonished by the strength and the openness of the feelings against those puritan mullahs who criticize as heresy all homage to Sufi saints.
“I feel that it is my duty to protect both the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me,” one woman told me. “Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the prophet.”
There are many like her; indeed, until recently Sufism was the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. And her point of view shows why the West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”
Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies. Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.”
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
'There can be no dialogue with India, says Syed Ali Shah Geelani' - Interview by Siraj Wahab, Arab Times
http://arabnews.com/world/article105258.ece
There can be no dialogue with India, says Syed Ali Shah Geelani
By SIRAJ WAHAB
Published: Aug 17, 2010 23:27 Updated: Aug 17, 2010 23:27
A key leader of Kashmir's growing anti-India movement says New Delhi's offer of talks is meaningless. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the octogenarian leader whose call for unarmed protests has galvanized thousands of activists to take to the streets in Indian-administered Kashmir, said he had heard of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer of talks during his speech at Delhi's historic Red Fort on Aug. 15.
"Yes, Singh did say that New Delhi is ready for talks but in the same breath he insisted that Kashmir was an integral part of India," said Geelani in an interview with Arab News by telephone from Srinagar on Tuesday. "There lies the whole problem ... If India refuses to consider Kashmir a disputed territory, then what is the point of holding talks?"
Geelani heads his own faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. He was written off as a spent force by India after the recent assembly elections that saw a huge turnout of Kashmiris. The result was seen as a vote for India. It was seen as a vote against separatists. Geelani says that was never the case. People took part in the election to put into place a local administration to take care of their day-to-day civic needs.
Today, Geelani is the one who commands complete respect from the Kashmiris. He is the undisputed leader of the insurgency at the moment. India has consistently tried to court him but he has refused to take the bait and insists that a plebiscite as demanded by UN resolutions is the only answer to the problem. It is interesting to note that Geelani has not always been a separatist leader. He was a member of the Kashmir Assembly for 15 years. "We adopted the democratic process but India paid no attention to solving this dispute. It continued to indulge in political machinations. It bought some people; it suppressed some and killed others. That is when I lost faith in India. India is still resorting to the same methods."
Following are excerpts from the interview:
Q: What is the situation in Kashmir?
A: We have called for a complete strike in the valley and everybody is paying heed to our call. Everything has come to a standstill. The state government has imposed curfew in many areas. I just came back home after spending two days in hospital. (He coughs intermittently during the talk; his son tells us that he was complaining of breathlessness and therefore had to be hospitalized and put on oxygen.) The whole city is deserted. In every nook and cranny there are Indian troops. The Central Reserve Police Forces are everywhere. Nobody is being allowed to come out onto the streets.
Q: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has extended what is being described as an olive branch to the separatists. He has offered to hold talks with you. Are you ready for talks?
A: Yes, he did say that New Delhi was ready for talks but in the same breath he insisted that Kashmir was an integral part of India. There lies the whole problem ... If India refuses to consider Kashmir a disputed territory then what is the point of holding talks? We agree that meaningful dialogue is one way of settling this issue but the most important requirement is for India to agree that Kashmir is indeed a disputed territory as accepted by the United Nations. Our case is very well documented in the world body. Kashmiris are asking for self determination. They are asking for freedom. They are asking India to honor its promise of holding a plebiscite. Naked military force will not extinguish the flame of freedom. Dialogue at the point of a gun has not resulted in anything, either in the past nor will it result in anything in the future.
Q: During the recent assembly elections, which were held a few months ago, there was an unprecedented and spontaneous turnout of Kashmiris. This led everyone to believe that Kashmiris have full faith in Indian democracy. The peaceful elections were seen as a blow to pro-independence people such as yourself. What led to the turning of the tide against Indian rule?
A: I am an eyewitness to the campaigning that took place in the run-up to the last assembly elections in which the Indian federal minister's Farooq Abdullah's National Conference party emerged victorious. Those who took part in the election process and those who cast their votes told us unambiguously and in public that they favored independence. "We are taking part in the electoral process to put in place the local administration. This has got to be set up in order to meet our day-to-day needs. We need roads, we need water, we need electricity," that is what the people told us. "Our votes should in no way mean that we are endorsing India's military rule over Kashmir. We were and we are with the pro-independence movement." However, India interpreted the writing on the wall in a different way. They thought the huge participation of Kashmiris in the assembly elections had driven a last nail in our coffin. Now you see and hear the people's voice in the streets of Kashmir. "Go back India," that is what they are shouting.
Q: How is this pro-independence movement different from the one in the late 1980s? That led to heavy bloodshed on both sides and ultimately resulted in nothing but misery for the Kashmiris.
A: In 1988, our youngsters were sick and tired of Indian atrocities. They were forced to take up the gun. They had no other choice. Delhi had closed the doors on all possible democratic and peaceful ways to solve the dispute. That was an armed struggle and the goal was to achieve freedom and a life of dignity. Since India believed only in showing off its military strength, our youngsters thought Delhi would only understand the same language. We supported the armed struggle because it was for a just cause. This time, however, they have not taken up the gun. This movement for freedom is completely peaceful from our side. This is a mass movement which is being led by our youngsters. They are not ordinary youngsters. They are educated young people. They are not asking for jobs. They are not asking for roads or water or electricity. They are just demanding one thing: Go, India, Go Back. They reject Indian rule. They are simply demanding freedom. They want to throw off the yoke of Indian rule. In return they are facing the full might of the Indian military state. I call this the worst example of state terrorism. The Indian troops create havoc during night raids. They break into homes at will. Pick up anybody they like. Rape our women. Our unarmed people are conducting peaceful demonstrations but they are being met with live bullets pumped straight into their chests. So far nearly 60 of our youngsters have attained martyrdom. Nobody has a stick in his hand. Nobody is carrying a gun. Nobody has got tear-gas shells. This is a completely peaceful struggle for freedom and independence. So this is the basic difference between the movement of 1988 and 2010. It was an armed struggle then, now it is totally peaceful. We have vowed not to pick up a gun against India.
Q: What led to this rethinking? Was it because the separatists paid a heavy price in blood in the late 1980s and early 1990s?
A: Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything. All armed struggles, whether they were just or otherwise were linked to terrorism. Our struggle too was bracketed with terrorism. Pakistan, which supported us, too, possibly at the instructions of the United States, clubbed our struggle with terrorism. That led to a rethinking in our ranks. In the initial days of this pro-independence movement, we took a conscious decision not to take up arms because we were afraid that our pious struggle would again be dubbed as terrorism by India and the outside world. So we opted for the path of peaceful struggle, which is what we are leading now. We want to run India out of excuses. Because the struggle in 1988 was armed, India justified the disproportionate use of military force. Now nobody can dare call us terrorists. This struggle has been on for the last two months. You will appreciate the fact that not one man in uniform has been killed at the hands of our men. We lost 60 people. They include women, children and the elderly. This is carnage and the world's so-called largest democracy is committing this carnage.
Q: There were reports in the Kashmiri media that you were not happy with the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC)?
A: They only pass resolutions. They are a group of 57 mostly Muslim countries. They should have some weight on the world stage. Some of these countries are economic heavyweights and oil producing countries. We expect them to pay special attention to what is happening in Kashmir. We are bound to them because of our common religion. They should exert pressure on India to stop the killing of Kashmiris. Can they not tell Delhi to stop violating the dignity of our women and children? Are we not their Islamic brothers? Just because these countries have huge economic interests with India, should that mean a carte blanche for India to do what it likes with Kashmiri Muslims? They should have the courage to ask this question of India. The OIC should play its role. It should immediately convene an extraordinary summit to discuss Kashmir. It is clearly mentioned in the Holy Qur'an to come to the aid of oppressed people. The sad reality is nobody is paying attention to our miseries. The world is silent.
Q: Pakistan was your greatest supporter. Are you in touch with the pro-freedom groups in Pakistan or the Pakistani leadership itself?
A: Pakistan is neck deep in trouble. The devastating floods have wreaked havoc in that country. And you know what happened in Karachi a few days ago. A member of the state legislature was killed and then in revenge killings, 80 people lost their lives. It seems the Dark Ages (jahaliya) have come back to haunt us. Pakistan is caught up in its own domestic problems. We are not in touch with them nor do we have any communication with them.
Q: Going back to India's offer of dialogue. You have rejected it. How do you think this deadlock can be broken?
A: There can be a way out only if India accepts publicly that Kashmir is a disputed territory. India should withdraw the occupation forces. The draconian laws that are in force should be declared null and void. These black laws are being used to stifle our voice. They have filled their jails with our people using brute force. My colleagues are all locked up. I am under house arrest most of the time. They don't allow me to meet my own people, to interact with them.
Q: State Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has appealed to the separatists to call off their protests. Will you heed his call?
A: The police and military apparatus are under his command. They take orders from him. He should ask them to stop firing on unarmed civilians. He should ask them to stop killing innocent people. Stop arresting the people. Stop caning peaceful demonstrators. We are not the ones indulging in violence. It is his men. Why is he requesting us to do something that is not is our hands? The Indian prime minister said the same things. "Abjure violence," he told us. These are plain lies. Not a single policeman or military man has lost his life because of our protests. It is the Indian state that is using brute force to suppress the spontaneous reaction of our people. India and its leaders are too well known for indulging in the politics of lies and deceit.
Q: It was the general belief that with the Congress party in power, Kashmiris would feel comfortable. Manmohan Singh is described as a respectable and reasonable man and a good prime minister.
A: This is just wishful thinking. They are all the followers of the politics of Chanakya. To expect politics of principle and reason from them is to live in a fool's paradise. India believes in the policy of expansionism. They are drunk on power, and they are doing exactly what Ghenghis Khan and Hulagu did in their times and what Hitler and Mussolini did in theirs.
There can be no dialogue with India, says Syed Ali Shah Geelani
By SIRAJ WAHAB
Published: Aug 17, 2010 23:27 Updated: Aug 17, 2010 23:27
A key leader of Kashmir's growing anti-India movement says New Delhi's offer of talks is meaningless. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the octogenarian leader whose call for unarmed protests has galvanized thousands of activists to take to the streets in Indian-administered Kashmir, said he had heard of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer of talks during his speech at Delhi's historic Red Fort on Aug. 15.
"Yes, Singh did say that New Delhi is ready for talks but in the same breath he insisted that Kashmir was an integral part of India," said Geelani in an interview with Arab News by telephone from Srinagar on Tuesday. "There lies the whole problem ... If India refuses to consider Kashmir a disputed territory, then what is the point of holding talks?"
Geelani heads his own faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. He was written off as a spent force by India after the recent assembly elections that saw a huge turnout of Kashmiris. The result was seen as a vote for India. It was seen as a vote against separatists. Geelani says that was never the case. People took part in the election to put into place a local administration to take care of their day-to-day civic needs.
Today, Geelani is the one who commands complete respect from the Kashmiris. He is the undisputed leader of the insurgency at the moment. India has consistently tried to court him but he has refused to take the bait and insists that a plebiscite as demanded by UN resolutions is the only answer to the problem. It is interesting to note that Geelani has not always been a separatist leader. He was a member of the Kashmir Assembly for 15 years. "We adopted the democratic process but India paid no attention to solving this dispute. It continued to indulge in political machinations. It bought some people; it suppressed some and killed others. That is when I lost faith in India. India is still resorting to the same methods."
Following are excerpts from the interview:
Q: What is the situation in Kashmir?
A: We have called for a complete strike in the valley and everybody is paying heed to our call. Everything has come to a standstill. The state government has imposed curfew in many areas. I just came back home after spending two days in hospital. (He coughs intermittently during the talk; his son tells us that he was complaining of breathlessness and therefore had to be hospitalized and put on oxygen.) The whole city is deserted. In every nook and cranny there are Indian troops. The Central Reserve Police Forces are everywhere. Nobody is being allowed to come out onto the streets.
Q: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has extended what is being described as an olive branch to the separatists. He has offered to hold talks with you. Are you ready for talks?
A: Yes, he did say that New Delhi was ready for talks but in the same breath he insisted that Kashmir was an integral part of India. There lies the whole problem ... If India refuses to consider Kashmir a disputed territory then what is the point of holding talks? We agree that meaningful dialogue is one way of settling this issue but the most important requirement is for India to agree that Kashmir is indeed a disputed territory as accepted by the United Nations. Our case is very well documented in the world body. Kashmiris are asking for self determination. They are asking for freedom. They are asking India to honor its promise of holding a plebiscite. Naked military force will not extinguish the flame of freedom. Dialogue at the point of a gun has not resulted in anything, either in the past nor will it result in anything in the future.
Q: During the recent assembly elections, which were held a few months ago, there was an unprecedented and spontaneous turnout of Kashmiris. This led everyone to believe that Kashmiris have full faith in Indian democracy. The peaceful elections were seen as a blow to pro-independence people such as yourself. What led to the turning of the tide against Indian rule?
A: I am an eyewitness to the campaigning that took place in the run-up to the last assembly elections in which the Indian federal minister's Farooq Abdullah's National Conference party emerged victorious. Those who took part in the election process and those who cast their votes told us unambiguously and in public that they favored independence. "We are taking part in the electoral process to put in place the local administration. This has got to be set up in order to meet our day-to-day needs. We need roads, we need water, we need electricity," that is what the people told us. "Our votes should in no way mean that we are endorsing India's military rule over Kashmir. We were and we are with the pro-independence movement." However, India interpreted the writing on the wall in a different way. They thought the huge participation of Kashmiris in the assembly elections had driven a last nail in our coffin. Now you see and hear the people's voice in the streets of Kashmir. "Go back India," that is what they are shouting.
Q: How is this pro-independence movement different from the one in the late 1980s? That led to heavy bloodshed on both sides and ultimately resulted in nothing but misery for the Kashmiris.
A: In 1988, our youngsters were sick and tired of Indian atrocities. They were forced to take up the gun. They had no other choice. Delhi had closed the doors on all possible democratic and peaceful ways to solve the dispute. That was an armed struggle and the goal was to achieve freedom and a life of dignity. Since India believed only in showing off its military strength, our youngsters thought Delhi would only understand the same language. We supported the armed struggle because it was for a just cause. This time, however, they have not taken up the gun. This movement for freedom is completely peaceful from our side. This is a mass movement which is being led by our youngsters. They are not ordinary youngsters. They are educated young people. They are not asking for jobs. They are not asking for roads or water or electricity. They are just demanding one thing: Go, India, Go Back. They reject Indian rule. They are simply demanding freedom. They want to throw off the yoke of Indian rule. In return they are facing the full might of the Indian military state. I call this the worst example of state terrorism. The Indian troops create havoc during night raids. They break into homes at will. Pick up anybody they like. Rape our women. Our unarmed people are conducting peaceful demonstrations but they are being met with live bullets pumped straight into their chests. So far nearly 60 of our youngsters have attained martyrdom. Nobody has a stick in his hand. Nobody is carrying a gun. Nobody has got tear-gas shells. This is a completely peaceful struggle for freedom and independence. So this is the basic difference between the movement of 1988 and 2010. It was an armed struggle then, now it is totally peaceful. We have vowed not to pick up a gun against India.
Q: What led to this rethinking? Was it because the separatists paid a heavy price in blood in the late 1980s and early 1990s?
A: Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything. All armed struggles, whether they were just or otherwise were linked to terrorism. Our struggle too was bracketed with terrorism. Pakistan, which supported us, too, possibly at the instructions of the United States, clubbed our struggle with terrorism. That led to a rethinking in our ranks. In the initial days of this pro-independence movement, we took a conscious decision not to take up arms because we were afraid that our pious struggle would again be dubbed as terrorism by India and the outside world. So we opted for the path of peaceful struggle, which is what we are leading now. We want to run India out of excuses. Because the struggle in 1988 was armed, India justified the disproportionate use of military force. Now nobody can dare call us terrorists. This struggle has been on for the last two months. You will appreciate the fact that not one man in uniform has been killed at the hands of our men. We lost 60 people. They include women, children and the elderly. This is carnage and the world's so-called largest democracy is committing this carnage.
Q: There were reports in the Kashmiri media that you were not happy with the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC)?
A: They only pass resolutions. They are a group of 57 mostly Muslim countries. They should have some weight on the world stage. Some of these countries are economic heavyweights and oil producing countries. We expect them to pay special attention to what is happening in Kashmir. We are bound to them because of our common religion. They should exert pressure on India to stop the killing of Kashmiris. Can they not tell Delhi to stop violating the dignity of our women and children? Are we not their Islamic brothers? Just because these countries have huge economic interests with India, should that mean a carte blanche for India to do what it likes with Kashmiri Muslims? They should have the courage to ask this question of India. The OIC should play its role. It should immediately convene an extraordinary summit to discuss Kashmir. It is clearly mentioned in the Holy Qur'an to come to the aid of oppressed people. The sad reality is nobody is paying attention to our miseries. The world is silent.
Q: Pakistan was your greatest supporter. Are you in touch with the pro-freedom groups in Pakistan or the Pakistani leadership itself?
A: Pakistan is neck deep in trouble. The devastating floods have wreaked havoc in that country. And you know what happened in Karachi a few days ago. A member of the state legislature was killed and then in revenge killings, 80 people lost their lives. It seems the Dark Ages (jahaliya) have come back to haunt us. Pakistan is caught up in its own domestic problems. We are not in touch with them nor do we have any communication with them.
Q: Going back to India's offer of dialogue. You have rejected it. How do you think this deadlock can be broken?
A: There can be a way out only if India accepts publicly that Kashmir is a disputed territory. India should withdraw the occupation forces. The draconian laws that are in force should be declared null and void. These black laws are being used to stifle our voice. They have filled their jails with our people using brute force. My colleagues are all locked up. I am under house arrest most of the time. They don't allow me to meet my own people, to interact with them.
Q: State Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has appealed to the separatists to call off their protests. Will you heed his call?
A: The police and military apparatus are under his command. They take orders from him. He should ask them to stop firing on unarmed civilians. He should ask them to stop killing innocent people. Stop arresting the people. Stop caning peaceful demonstrators. We are not the ones indulging in violence. It is his men. Why is he requesting us to do something that is not is our hands? The Indian prime minister said the same things. "Abjure violence," he told us. These are plain lies. Not a single policeman or military man has lost his life because of our protests. It is the Indian state that is using brute force to suppress the spontaneous reaction of our people. India and its leaders are too well known for indulging in the politics of lies and deceit.
Q: It was the general belief that with the Congress party in power, Kashmiris would feel comfortable. Manmohan Singh is described as a respectable and reasonable man and a good prime minister.
A: This is just wishful thinking. They are all the followers of the politics of Chanakya. To expect politics of principle and reason from them is to live in a fool's paradise. India believes in the policy of expansionism. They are drunk on power, and they are doing exactly what Ghenghis Khan and Hulagu did in their times and what Hitler and Mussolini did in theirs.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
TOI brings Islam into Kashmir imbraglio - By Ghulam Muhammed
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Times Of India does it again – IX
TOI brings Islam into Kashmir imbraglio
As a gift of India’s 63rd Independence Day, Time of India has once again targeted Indian Muslims for their grave sin of adopting Islam as their religion.
TOI published an article on August 15, 2010 in its print edition, penned by TOI’s own special hatchet-man, bearing a Muslim name, but sold out to his employers in churning out articles that do not reflect either the truth or the real aspirations of Indian Muslims, whom TOI had directly addressed its exhortation.
By selecting the headline: “Geelani should re-read Islam”, Mohammed Wajihuddin and TOI have challenged Indian Muslims in general to interpret Islam, as per the guidance of the Jain owner’s own agenda.
However, the Kashmir problem which is being discussed interwoven into the narrative, has nothing to do with Islam. It is a movement against the oppression of a government run by a hawkish oligarchy that is so drunk with the power of army, that it has no need to treat its ‘supposedly’ own people as human beings. Can the modern media-linked world remain calm if 50 protestors are killed by security forces within a fortnight in any part of the world?
The name of democracy, freedom and secularism is repeatedly abused in legitimizing an obnoxiously oppressive regime on people that are not necessarily of the same colour, race, religion, social status and/ethnicity as the ruling elite.
To make Kashmir, an issue of Islam, Wajihuddin has blatantly sidetracked the grievances of Kashmiris as articulated at least in large part by Ahmed Shah Geelani, whose personal antecedent is only incidental as his word of peace that brought the stone-pelting youngsters from the streets of curfew-imposed Kashmiri towns and villages, to call off their street violence, has more to do with Geelani’s steadfast opposition to New Delhi, which has for all practical purposes imposed an occupation army on the state.
By bringing in Islam, Wajihuddin and TOI are trying to sidetrack the whole issue of legitimate public protests against the brutal stranglehold of a web of so-called security regime, whose mind-set has been most pronouncedly for decades that of an occupied force holding on to a conquered people.
Wajihuddin’s line up of the 3 Islamic scholars to bolster his agenda against Islam, themselves have not been able to establish any linkages between the current political upheaval and Islam.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s narration of an stray incidence has nothing to do with any Islamic content to his political views that with the so-called independence, if at all granted to Kashmir, Azad Kashmir will be a failed state. That verdict is a political judgment and has nothing to do with his Islamic scholarship.
The same is the case with Wajihuddin’s other favourite Islamic scholars, who are bringing in the subject of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism to legitimize the fundamentalism and extremism of the Indian security elements in Kashmir.
Sultan Shahin has an axe to grind against Islamic radicals and his vision is so blurred that he cannot see that the problem of Kashmir is not of the making of any Islamic fundamentalist; though they, the radicals may try to hijack it as such. It is a straight forward problem of governance of a people that do not see eye to eye with their distant rulers who have made their everyday lives fraught with fear and despair and that too for over half a century.
By trying to sideline the real problem from the real life miseries, and shift the focus to Islam and its radicals, TOI and Wajihuddin are in fact rendering a disservice to India itself.
Unless the rulers are made aware that the protests mounted by genuine victims of India’s heavily oppressive army presence in every nook of corner of their communities, is not emanating from Islam, all efforts if any by the ruling coterie at the helm of affair in New Delhi, will only buy time for a further later postponement of the real problems till outsiders intervene. If India is constitutionally secular, the basic logic of its solutions for Kashmir has to be on the lines of secular principles and not on the confrontational lines of Islam v/s Hindutva, as TOI would like to have it.
Wajihuddin holds that ‘ The demand for a separate or Pakistani Kashmir is based on a skewed, selective reading of Islam.’ He brings in Geelani’s supposed ideological mentors, Jamaate Islam’s founder Maulana Abul Ala Maududi and Egyptian scholars Syed Qutub and Hasan al Banna before him who propagated the theory that Islam wanted Muslims to strive and establish an Islamic state. But the exclusivitism idealized by some Islamic scholar does not hide the fact that it is a basic human instinct. Did not Nehru, Patel and other Congress leaders, agreed to partition as they wanted the rest of India to be ruled exclusively by them --- the Brahmin ruling class? So why then merely demonise Muslim scholars. This is age-old and universal and almost human phenomenon. History is unfortunately replete with incidents where the need to go exclusive has been the real motivations to lead to both victories and disasters. Are US and Zionists not trying to impose their New World Order to achieve exclusive power to rule the world on their terms?
It is another matter that in India, Congress leaders did not succeed in achieving the exclusivity that they had planned by wholesale transfer of entire Muslim population to the other side. But short of that, have they not succeeded gaining effective and practical exclusivity by continuing to discriminate, de-legitimise and corrode Muslim citizenship in India. It started with India’s first President Rajendra Prasad passing a decree to exclude Muslim Dalits from any reservation equations, even if they were backward and Dalit. It started with India’s first home minister Sardar Patel issuing secret memo to all security agencies in the land to weed out Muslims. Why Wajihuddian and TOI does not raise its ‘truth should prevail’ campaign against that Brahmin ‘exclusivity’ instead of crying over Maududi’s call for Muslim state which is hardly relevant to India or Kashmir?
Wajihuddin has a point that ‘the argument that the Muslim majority Kashmir must either go to Islamic Pakistan or become a separate, sovereign Islamic state defies the Valley’s own history.’ That ethos is still thriving when Geelani wants Kashmiri Brahmins to come back in full peace, honour and brotherhood. In Kashmir, if the so-called fundamentalist Muslim like Geelani extends a welcome to Brahmins, he has people’s trust to see that happen in toto. Kashmir has been an island of communal harmony for ages, till outsiders spoiled the paradise. That outside influence has to be neutralized, in whatever shape or form, for Kashmir to turn again into a Paradise on earth.
Times of India’s separate agenda of demonizing Muslims and Islam keeps popping up, as the editors and owners seem to have built up a constituency that thrives on hate and division. Their communal management of public issues vital to the integrity and security, by bringing in extraneous divisive misinformation to their extensive readership of the nation, needs to be condemned and checked with appropriate actions by the government in the best interest of the country.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com
Times Of India does it again – IX
TOI brings Islam into Kashmir imbraglio
As a gift of India’s 63rd Independence Day, Time of India has once again targeted Indian Muslims for their grave sin of adopting Islam as their religion.
TOI published an article on August 15, 2010 in its print edition, penned by TOI’s own special hatchet-man, bearing a Muslim name, but sold out to his employers in churning out articles that do not reflect either the truth or the real aspirations of Indian Muslims, whom TOI had directly addressed its exhortation.
By selecting the headline: “Geelani should re-read Islam”, Mohammed Wajihuddin and TOI have challenged Indian Muslims in general to interpret Islam, as per the guidance of the Jain owner’s own agenda.
However, the Kashmir problem which is being discussed interwoven into the narrative, has nothing to do with Islam. It is a movement against the oppression of a government run by a hawkish oligarchy that is so drunk with the power of army, that it has no need to treat its ‘supposedly’ own people as human beings. Can the modern media-linked world remain calm if 50 protestors are killed by security forces within a fortnight in any part of the world?
The name of democracy, freedom and secularism is repeatedly abused in legitimizing an obnoxiously oppressive regime on people that are not necessarily of the same colour, race, religion, social status and/ethnicity as the ruling elite.
To make Kashmir, an issue of Islam, Wajihuddin has blatantly sidetracked the grievances of Kashmiris as articulated at least in large part by Ahmed Shah Geelani, whose personal antecedent is only incidental as his word of peace that brought the stone-pelting youngsters from the streets of curfew-imposed Kashmiri towns and villages, to call off their street violence, has more to do with Geelani’s steadfast opposition to New Delhi, which has for all practical purposes imposed an occupation army on the state.
By bringing in Islam, Wajihuddin and TOI are trying to sidetrack the whole issue of legitimate public protests against the brutal stranglehold of a web of so-called security regime, whose mind-set has been most pronouncedly for decades that of an occupied force holding on to a conquered people.
Wajihuddin’s line up of the 3 Islamic scholars to bolster his agenda against Islam, themselves have not been able to establish any linkages between the current political upheaval and Islam.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s narration of an stray incidence has nothing to do with any Islamic content to his political views that with the so-called independence, if at all granted to Kashmir, Azad Kashmir will be a failed state. That verdict is a political judgment and has nothing to do with his Islamic scholarship.
The same is the case with Wajihuddin’s other favourite Islamic scholars, who are bringing in the subject of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism to legitimize the fundamentalism and extremism of the Indian security elements in Kashmir.
Sultan Shahin has an axe to grind against Islamic radicals and his vision is so blurred that he cannot see that the problem of Kashmir is not of the making of any Islamic fundamentalist; though they, the radicals may try to hijack it as such. It is a straight forward problem of governance of a people that do not see eye to eye with their distant rulers who have made their everyday lives fraught with fear and despair and that too for over half a century.
By trying to sideline the real problem from the real life miseries, and shift the focus to Islam and its radicals, TOI and Wajihuddin are in fact rendering a disservice to India itself.
Unless the rulers are made aware that the protests mounted by genuine victims of India’s heavily oppressive army presence in every nook of corner of their communities, is not emanating from Islam, all efforts if any by the ruling coterie at the helm of affair in New Delhi, will only buy time for a further later postponement of the real problems till outsiders intervene. If India is constitutionally secular, the basic logic of its solutions for Kashmir has to be on the lines of secular principles and not on the confrontational lines of Islam v/s Hindutva, as TOI would like to have it.
Wajihuddin holds that ‘ The demand for a separate or Pakistani Kashmir is based on a skewed, selective reading of Islam.’ He brings in Geelani’s supposed ideological mentors, Jamaate Islam’s founder Maulana Abul Ala Maududi and Egyptian scholars Syed Qutub and Hasan al Banna before him who propagated the theory that Islam wanted Muslims to strive and establish an Islamic state. But the exclusivitism idealized by some Islamic scholar does not hide the fact that it is a basic human instinct. Did not Nehru, Patel and other Congress leaders, agreed to partition as they wanted the rest of India to be ruled exclusively by them --- the Brahmin ruling class? So why then merely demonise Muslim scholars. This is age-old and universal and almost human phenomenon. History is unfortunately replete with incidents where the need to go exclusive has been the real motivations to lead to both victories and disasters. Are US and Zionists not trying to impose their New World Order to achieve exclusive power to rule the world on their terms?
It is another matter that in India, Congress leaders did not succeed in achieving the exclusivity that they had planned by wholesale transfer of entire Muslim population to the other side. But short of that, have they not succeeded gaining effective and practical exclusivity by continuing to discriminate, de-legitimise and corrode Muslim citizenship in India. It started with India’s first President Rajendra Prasad passing a decree to exclude Muslim Dalits from any reservation equations, even if they were backward and Dalit. It started with India’s first home minister Sardar Patel issuing secret memo to all security agencies in the land to weed out Muslims. Why Wajihuddian and TOI does not raise its ‘truth should prevail’ campaign against that Brahmin ‘exclusivity’ instead of crying over Maududi’s call for Muslim state which is hardly relevant to India or Kashmir?
Wajihuddin has a point that ‘the argument that the Muslim majority Kashmir must either go to Islamic Pakistan or become a separate, sovereign Islamic state defies the Valley’s own history.’ That ethos is still thriving when Geelani wants Kashmiri Brahmins to come back in full peace, honour and brotherhood. In Kashmir, if the so-called fundamentalist Muslim like Geelani extends a welcome to Brahmins, he has people’s trust to see that happen in toto. Kashmir has been an island of communal harmony for ages, till outsiders spoiled the paradise. That outside influence has to be neutralized, in whatever shape or form, for Kashmir to turn again into a Paradise on earth.
Times of India’s separate agenda of demonizing Muslims and Islam keeps popping up, as the editors and owners seem to have built up a constituency that thrives on hate and division. Their communal management of public issues vital to the integrity and security, by bringing in extraneous divisive misinformation to their extensive readership of the nation, needs to be condemned and checked with appropriate actions by the government in the best interest of the country.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory By Ghulam Muhammed
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory
The recent spate of natural disasters practically zeroing on the new emerging developing nations of Asia, that are becoming a source of great discomfort to the world’s supposed lone super power, has been so out of proportion to what had ever occurred in the past, that people are beginning to speculate if there is a human element to exploiting climate for strategic objective.
The fire all over Russian hinterland where acres and acres of agricultural and forest lands had been devastated could be technically triggered by laser attack from overhead satellites.
The rain clouds that had never crossed Pakistan’s mostly southern areas, had massively moved up to the mountains in menacing proportion and the most disastrous cloud bursts that forced the clouds to target some strategic areas which had recently been under US revengeful drone bombings as well as forced Pakistani Army’s combing operations in and around Swat region, could easily be manipulated from outer space satellites using laser technology. The almost hysterical coverage of the disaster in the area by BBC reporters and the UN coming in with massive aid requests, hints at some covert moves that is known only to western sources. It all appears to be a massive organized affair.
The disaster that India’s Ladakh region suffered, is bordering China. US would like to move its presence to these border areas with full understanding with India for future build up against a non-cooperative China.
The contours of this conspiracy theory is being circulated among ordinary people in India and the sense of disbelief that surrounds the whole series of natural disasters coinciding and matching seasonal changes and climate manipulation of the kind that resulted the infamous tsunami, widely believed to be triggered by an undersea nuclear explosion, have been forcing people to question the real nature of US state and its global objectives. It would appear that people like Obama are just pawns in the bigger game plan that is still hidden from the gaze of the people of the world.
In this connection the grave warnings of Stephen Hawkings about human frailty and the raw power it has acquired, threatening human survival on this planet, are further food for thought.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory
The recent spate of natural disasters practically zeroing on the new emerging developing nations of Asia, that are becoming a source of great discomfort to the world’s supposed lone super power, has been so out of proportion to what had ever occurred in the past, that people are beginning to speculate if there is a human element to exploiting climate for strategic objective.
The fire all over Russian hinterland where acres and acres of agricultural and forest lands had been devastated could be technically triggered by laser attack from overhead satellites.
The rain clouds that had never crossed Pakistan’s mostly southern areas, had massively moved up to the mountains in menacing proportion and the most disastrous cloud bursts that forced the clouds to target some strategic areas which had recently been under US revengeful drone bombings as well as forced Pakistani Army’s combing operations in and around Swat region, could easily be manipulated from outer space satellites using laser technology. The almost hysterical coverage of the disaster in the area by BBC reporters and the UN coming in with massive aid requests, hints at some covert moves that is known only to western sources. It all appears to be a massive organized affair.
The disaster that India’s Ladakh region suffered, is bordering China. US would like to move its presence to these border areas with full understanding with India for future build up against a non-cooperative China.
The contours of this conspiracy theory is being circulated among ordinary people in India and the sense of disbelief that surrounds the whole series of natural disasters coinciding and matching seasonal changes and climate manipulation of the kind that resulted the infamous tsunami, widely believed to be triggered by an undersea nuclear explosion, have been forcing people to question the real nature of US state and its global objectives. It would appear that people like Obama are just pawns in the bigger game plan that is still hidden from the gaze of the people of the world.
In this connection the grave warnings of Stephen Hawkings about human frailty and the raw power it has acquired, threatening human survival on this planet, are further food for thought.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Build that mosque - Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/16743239
Lexington
Build that mosque
The campaign against the proposed Cordoba centre in New York is unjust and dangerous
Aug 5th 2010
WHAT makes a Muslim in Britain or America wake up and decide that he is no longer a Briton or American but an Islamic “soldier” fighting a holy war against the infidel? Part of it must be pull: the lure of jihadism. Part is presumably push: a feeling that he no longer belongs to the place where he lives. Either way, the results can be lethal. A chilling feature of the suicide video left by Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the band that killed more than 50 people in London in July, 2005, was the homely Yorkshire accent in which he told his countrymen that “your” government is at war with “my people”.
For a while America seemed less vulnerable than Europe to home-grown jihadism. The Pew Research Centre reported three years ago that most Muslim Americans were “largely assimilated, happy with their lives… and decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes.” Since then it has become clear that American Muslims can be converted to terrorism too. Nidal Malik Hassan, born in America and an army major, killed 13 of his comrades in a shooting spree at Fort Hood. Faisal Shahzad, a legal immigrant, tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square. But something about America—the fact that it is a nation of immigrants, perhaps, or its greater religiosity, or the separation of church and state, or the opportunities to rise—still seems to make it an easier place than Europe for Muslims to feel accepted and at home.
It was in part to preserve this feeling that George Bush repeated like a scratched gramophone record that Americans were at war with the terrorists who had attacked them on 9/11, not at war with Islam. Barack Obama has followed suit: the White House national security strategy published in May says that one way to guard against radicalisation at home is to stress that “diversity is part of our strength—not a source of division or insecurity.” This is hardly rocket science. America is plainly safer if its Muslims feel part of “us” and not, like Mohammad Sidique Khan, part of “them”. And that means reminding Americans of the difference—a real one, by the way, not one fabricated for the purposes of political correctness—between Islam, a religion with a billion adherents, and al-Qaeda, a terrorist outfit that claims to speak in Islam’s name but has absolutely no right or mandate to do so.
Why would any responsible American politician want to erase that vital distinction? Good question. Ask Sarah Palin, or Newt Gingrich, or the many others who have lately clambered aboard the offensive campaign to stop Cordoba House, a proposed community centre and mosque, from being built in New York two blocks from the site of the twin towers. Every single argument put forward for blocking this project leans in some way on the misconceived notion that all Muslims, and Islam itself, share the responsibility for, or are tainted by, the atrocities of 9/11.
In a tweet last month from Alaska, Ms Palin called on “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the “ground-zero mosque” because it would “stab” American hearts. But why should it? Cordoba House is not being built by al-Qaeda. To the contrary, it is the brainchild of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a well-meaning American cleric who has spent years trying to promote interfaith understanding, not an apostle of religious war like Osama bin Laden. He is modelling his project on New York’s 92nd Street Y, a Jewish community centre that reaches out to other religions. The site was selected in part precisely so that it might heal some of the wounds opened by the felling of the twin towers and all that followed. True, some relatives of 9/11 victims are hurt by the idea of a mosque going up near the site. But that feeling of hurt makes sense only if they too buy the false idea that Muslims in general were perpetrators of the crime. Besides, what about the feelings, and for that matter the rights, of America’s Muslims—some of whom also perished in the atrocity?
Ms Palin’s argument does at least have one mitigating virtue: it concentrates on the impact the centre might have, without impugning the motives of those who want to build it. The same half-defence can be made of the Anti-Defamation League, a venerable Jewish organisation created to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. To the dismay of many liberal Jews, the ADL has also urged the centre’s backers to seek another site in order to spare the feelings of families of the 9/11 victims. But at least it concedes that they have every right to build at this site—and that they might (only might, since the ADL hints at vague concerns about their ideology and finances) genuinely have chosen it in order to send a positive message about Islam.
The Saudi non-sequitur
No such plea of mitigation can be entered on behalf of Mr Gingrich. The former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives may or may not have presidential pretensions, but he certainly has intellectual ones. That makes it impossible to excuse the mean spirit and scrambled logic of his assertion that “there should be no mosque near ground zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia”. Come again? Why hold the rights of Americans who happen to be Muslim hostage to the policy of a foreign country that happens also to be Muslim? To Mr Gingrich, it seems, an American Muslim is a Muslim first and an American second. Al-Qaeda would doubtless concur.
Mr Gingrich also objects to the centre’s name. Imam Feisal says he chose “Cordoba” in recollection of a time when the rest of Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages but Muslims, Jews and Christians created an oasis of art, culture and science. Mr Gingrich sees only a “deliberate insult”, a reminder of a period when Muslim conquerors ruled Spain. Like Mr bin Laden, Mr Gingrich is apparently still relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago. He should rejoin the modern world, before he does real harm.
Economist.com/blogs/lexington
[This article attracted 448 comments from readers.]
Lexington
Build that mosque
The campaign against the proposed Cordoba centre in New York is unjust and dangerous
Aug 5th 2010
WHAT makes a Muslim in Britain or America wake up and decide that he is no longer a Briton or American but an Islamic “soldier” fighting a holy war against the infidel? Part of it must be pull: the lure of jihadism. Part is presumably push: a feeling that he no longer belongs to the place where he lives. Either way, the results can be lethal. A chilling feature of the suicide video left by Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the band that killed more than 50 people in London in July, 2005, was the homely Yorkshire accent in which he told his countrymen that “your” government is at war with “my people”.
For a while America seemed less vulnerable than Europe to home-grown jihadism. The Pew Research Centre reported three years ago that most Muslim Americans were “largely assimilated, happy with their lives… and decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes.” Since then it has become clear that American Muslims can be converted to terrorism too. Nidal Malik Hassan, born in America and an army major, killed 13 of his comrades in a shooting spree at Fort Hood. Faisal Shahzad, a legal immigrant, tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square. But something about America—the fact that it is a nation of immigrants, perhaps, or its greater religiosity, or the separation of church and state, or the opportunities to rise—still seems to make it an easier place than Europe for Muslims to feel accepted and at home.
It was in part to preserve this feeling that George Bush repeated like a scratched gramophone record that Americans were at war with the terrorists who had attacked them on 9/11, not at war with Islam. Barack Obama has followed suit: the White House national security strategy published in May says that one way to guard against radicalisation at home is to stress that “diversity is part of our strength—not a source of division or insecurity.” This is hardly rocket science. America is plainly safer if its Muslims feel part of “us” and not, like Mohammad Sidique Khan, part of “them”. And that means reminding Americans of the difference—a real one, by the way, not one fabricated for the purposes of political correctness—between Islam, a religion with a billion adherents, and al-Qaeda, a terrorist outfit that claims to speak in Islam’s name but has absolutely no right or mandate to do so.
Why would any responsible American politician want to erase that vital distinction? Good question. Ask Sarah Palin, or Newt Gingrich, or the many others who have lately clambered aboard the offensive campaign to stop Cordoba House, a proposed community centre and mosque, from being built in New York two blocks from the site of the twin towers. Every single argument put forward for blocking this project leans in some way on the misconceived notion that all Muslims, and Islam itself, share the responsibility for, or are tainted by, the atrocities of 9/11.
In a tweet last month from Alaska, Ms Palin called on “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the “ground-zero mosque” because it would “stab” American hearts. But why should it? Cordoba House is not being built by al-Qaeda. To the contrary, it is the brainchild of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a well-meaning American cleric who has spent years trying to promote interfaith understanding, not an apostle of religious war like Osama bin Laden. He is modelling his project on New York’s 92nd Street Y, a Jewish community centre that reaches out to other religions. The site was selected in part precisely so that it might heal some of the wounds opened by the felling of the twin towers and all that followed. True, some relatives of 9/11 victims are hurt by the idea of a mosque going up near the site. But that feeling of hurt makes sense only if they too buy the false idea that Muslims in general were perpetrators of the crime. Besides, what about the feelings, and for that matter the rights, of America’s Muslims—some of whom also perished in the atrocity?
Ms Palin’s argument does at least have one mitigating virtue: it concentrates on the impact the centre might have, without impugning the motives of those who want to build it. The same half-defence can be made of the Anti-Defamation League, a venerable Jewish organisation created to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. To the dismay of many liberal Jews, the ADL has also urged the centre’s backers to seek another site in order to spare the feelings of families of the 9/11 victims. But at least it concedes that they have every right to build at this site—and that they might (only might, since the ADL hints at vague concerns about their ideology and finances) genuinely have chosen it in order to send a positive message about Islam.
The Saudi non-sequitur
No such plea of mitigation can be entered on behalf of Mr Gingrich. The former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives may or may not have presidential pretensions, but he certainly has intellectual ones. That makes it impossible to excuse the mean spirit and scrambled logic of his assertion that “there should be no mosque near ground zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia”. Come again? Why hold the rights of Americans who happen to be Muslim hostage to the policy of a foreign country that happens also to be Muslim? To Mr Gingrich, it seems, an American Muslim is a Muslim first and an American second. Al-Qaeda would doubtless concur.
Mr Gingrich also objects to the centre’s name. Imam Feisal says he chose “Cordoba” in recollection of a time when the rest of Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages but Muslims, Jews and Christians created an oasis of art, culture and science. Mr Gingrich sees only a “deliberate insult”, a reminder of a period when Muslim conquerors ruled Spain. Like Mr bin Laden, Mr Gingrich is apparently still relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago. He should rejoin the modern world, before he does real harm.
Economist.com/blogs/lexington
[This article attracted 448 comments from readers.]
Friday, August 6, 2010
What ails Aakar Patel? By Ghulam Muhammed
To: Editor, Livemint
What ails Aakar Patel?
Aakar Patel suffers from a blind spot towards Indian government’s historical as well as continued communal role that at people’s level is an everyday presence in Kashmir. Aakar answers his own Q&A by giving less than the full picture. To the question: Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn't an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar? – his answer does not disclose that there is a Hindu Governor at the head of the state; why not a Kashmiri Muslim? The police chief that carried out the shoot at sight operations against the stone-throwers is another Hindu. Why State is not free to appoint a Muslim on both these and other sensitive post? Because it is not Azad, it is not free. Its internal self rule is a sham. Even the British self-rule was more free than that offered by India to Kashmiris. No British army had unleashed the kind of atrocities and rape of Kashmiri women as Indian Army and other security forces have in Kashmir. Aakar Patel does not see any acts of commission and/or omission on the part of Indian government that is the main cause of an ongoing deprivation of freedom to the Kashmiri people. Indian government may boast of a fine constitution, but the way it is being applied or has not being applied, is another matter. India has failed to provide a truly secular governance to its Muslim citizens. In Kashmir that failure has been compounded hundred times. How can Aakar Patel be blind to the role of Indian government. Not a single word in his article on this 800 pound gorilla!
Aakar Patel has concentrated his analysis on ‘divide and rule’ principle. Since his audience is the western reader, already tuned to the bogey of sharia and Islamic rule, he chooses to implant that scenario on Kashmir. In fact, Kashmir historically has been the most tolerant Muslim society and even Aakar Patel will agree to that historical fact. The recent upsurge in symbolic Friday holiday or other extremist measures have not universal majority sanctions and Aakar Patel should not take up those symbolic issues to justify his thesis that Kashmir has a Sunni idea of Azadi (Freedom). Besides, that is a lame excuse for any Indian government to hang on to Kashmir as justification.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com/
-----------------------------------------------------
LIVEMINT.COM
Published on August 07 2010 , Lounge Page 5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of `azadi'
We know what Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn't an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar? Yes, but Hurriyat rejects elections. Why?
Because ballots have no azadi option.
But why can't the azadi demand be made by democratically elected leaders?
Because elections are rigged through the Indian Army. Why is the Indian Army out in Srinagar and not in Surat?
Because Kashmiris want azadi.
Let's try that again.
What do Kashmiris want freedom from? India's Constitution.
What is offensive about India's Constitution? It is not Islamic. This is the issue, let us be clear.
The violence in Srinagar isn't for democratic self-rule because Kashmiris have that. The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution.
Hurriyat deceives the world by using a universal word, azadi, to push a narrow, religious demand. Kashmiris have no confusion about what azadi means: It means Shariah. Friday holidays, amputating thieves' hands, abolishing interest, prohibiting alcohol (and kite-flying), stoning adulterers, lynching apostates and all the rest of it that comprises the ideal Sunni state.
Not one Shia gang terrorizes India; terrorism on the subcontinent is a Sunni monopoly.
There is a token Shia among the Hurriyat's bearded warriors, but it is essentially a Sunni group pursuing Sunni Shariah. Its most important figure is Umar Farooq. He's called mirwaiz, meaning head of preachers (waiz), but he inherited his title at 17 and actually is no Islamic scholar. He is English-educated, but his base is Srinagar's sullen neighbourhood of Maisuma, at the front of the stone-pelting. His following is conservative and, since he has little scholarship, he is unable to bend his constituents to his view.
Hurriyat's modernists are led by Sopore's 80-year-old Ali Geelani of Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat was founded in 1941 by a brilliant man from Maharashtra called Maududi, who invented the structure of the modern Islamic state along the lines of a Communist one. Maududi opposed Jinnah's tribal raid in Kashmir, which led to the Line of Control, saying jihad could only be prosecuted formally by a Muslim state, and not informally by militias. This wisdom was discarded later, and Hizb al-Mujahideen, starring Syed Salahuddin of cap and beard fame, is a Jamaat unit. Maududi was ecumenical, meaning that he unified the four Sunni groups of thought. He always excluded Shias, as heretics.
The Kashmiri separatist movement is actually inseparable from Sunni fundamentalism. Those on the Hurriyat's fringes who say they are Gandhians, like Yasin Malik, are carried along by the others in the group so long as the immediate task of resisting India is in common. But the Hurriyat and its aims are ultimately poisonous, even for Muslims.
The Hurriyat Conference's idea of freedom unfolds from a religious instinct, not a secular sentiment. This instinct is sectarian, and all the pro-azadi groups are Shia-killers. In promoting their hatred, the groups plead for the support of other Muslims by leaning on the name of the Prophet Muhammad.
Hafiz is a title and means memorizer of the Quran.
Mohammed Saeed's Lashkar Tayyaba means army of Tyeb (“the good“), one of the Prophet's names.
This is incorrectly spelled and pronounced by our journalists as “Taiba“ or “Toiba“, but Muslims can place the name. Lashkar rejects all law from sources other than the recorded sayings and actions of Muhammad. This is called being Wahhabi, and Wahhabis detest the Shia.
Jaish Muhammad (Muhammad's army) was founded in a Karachi mosque, and it is linked to the Shia-killing Sipah Sahaba (Army of Muhammad's First Followers) in Pakistan's Seraiki-speaking southern Punjab. The group follows a narrow, anti-Shia doctrine developed in Deoband. Decades of non-interference by the Pakistani state in the business of Kashmiri separatism has led to a loss of internal sovereignty in Pakistan. The state is no longer able to convince its citizens that it should act against these groups. Though their own Shia are regularly butchered, a poll shows that a quarter of Pakistanis think Lashkar Tayyaba does good work. We think Indian Muslims are different from Pakistanis and less susceptible to fanaticism. It is interesting that within Pakistan, the only group openly and violently opposed to Taliban and terrorism are UP and Bihar migrants who form Karachi's secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party.
So what do the separatist groups want? It is wrong to see them as being only terrorist groups. They operate in an intellectual framework, and there is a higher idea that drives the violence. This is a perfect state with an executive who is pious, male and Sunni. Such a state, where all is done according to the book, will get God to shower his blessings on the citizens, who will all be Sunnis.
There are three types of Sunnis in Kashmir. Unionists, separatists, and neutrals. Unionists, like Omar Abdullah, are secular and likely to be repelled by separatism because they have seen the damage caused by political Islam in Pakistan. They might not be in love with Indians, but they see the beauty of the Indian Constitution. Neutrals, like Mehbooba Mufti, are pragmatic and will accept the Indian Constitution when in power, though they show defiance when out of it. This is fine, because they respond to a Muslim constituency that is uncertain, but isn't totally alienated. The longer these two groups participate in democracy in Kashmir, the weaker the separatists become. The current violence is a result of this. Given their boycott of politics, the Hurriyat must rally its base by urging them to violence and most of it happens in Maisuma and Sopore. The violence should also clarify the problem in the minds of neutrals: If Kashmiri rule does not solve the azadi problem, what will?
India's liberals are defensive when debating Kashmir because of our unfulfilled promise on plebiscite. But they shouldn't be. There is really no option to secular democracy, whether one chooses it through a plebiscite or whether it is imposed. It is a universal idea and there is no second form of government in any culture or religion that works. The Islamic state is utopian and it never arrives. Since it is driven by belief, however, the search becomes quite desperate.
India has a constitution; Pakistan has editions. These are the various Pakistani constitutions: 1935 (secular), 1956 (federal), 1962 (dictatorial), 1973 (parliamentary), 1979 (Islamic), 1999 (presidential), 2008 (parliamentary).
Why do they keep changing and searching? Muslims keep trying to hammer in Islamic bits into a set of laws that is actually quite complete.
This is the Government of India Act of 1935, gifted to us by the British.
Kashmiris have it, and perhaps at some point they will learn to appreciate its beauty.
Aakar Patel will take a break from his column to write a book. He will return early next year.
Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com
What ails Aakar Patel?
Aakar Patel suffers from a blind spot towards Indian government’s historical as well as continued communal role that at people’s level is an everyday presence in Kashmir. Aakar answers his own Q&A by giving less than the full picture. To the question: Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn't an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar? – his answer does not disclose that there is a Hindu Governor at the head of the state; why not a Kashmiri Muslim? The police chief that carried out the shoot at sight operations against the stone-throwers is another Hindu. Why State is not free to appoint a Muslim on both these and other sensitive post? Because it is not Azad, it is not free. Its internal self rule is a sham. Even the British self-rule was more free than that offered by India to Kashmiris. No British army had unleashed the kind of atrocities and rape of Kashmiri women as Indian Army and other security forces have in Kashmir. Aakar Patel does not see any acts of commission and/or omission on the part of Indian government that is the main cause of an ongoing deprivation of freedom to the Kashmiri people. Indian government may boast of a fine constitution, but the way it is being applied or has not being applied, is another matter. India has failed to provide a truly secular governance to its Muslim citizens. In Kashmir that failure has been compounded hundred times. How can Aakar Patel be blind to the role of Indian government. Not a single word in his article on this 800 pound gorilla!
Aakar Patel has concentrated his analysis on ‘divide and rule’ principle. Since his audience is the western reader, already tuned to the bogey of sharia and Islamic rule, he chooses to implant that scenario on Kashmir. In fact, Kashmir historically has been the most tolerant Muslim society and even Aakar Patel will agree to that historical fact. The recent upsurge in symbolic Friday holiday or other extremist measures have not universal majority sanctions and Aakar Patel should not take up those symbolic issues to justify his thesis that Kashmir has a Sunni idea of Azadi (Freedom). Besides, that is a lame excuse for any Indian government to hang on to Kashmir as justification.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com/
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LIVEMINT.COM
Published on August 07 2010 , Lounge Page 5
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What ails Kashmir? The Sunni idea of `azadi'
We know what Hurriyat Conference wants: azadi, freedom. But freedom from what? Freedom from Indian rule. Doesn't an elected Kashmiri, Omar Abdullah, rule from Srinagar? Yes, but Hurriyat rejects elections. Why?
Because ballots have no azadi option.
But why can't the azadi demand be made by democratically elected leaders?
Because elections are rigged through the Indian Army. Why is the Indian Army out in Srinagar and not in Surat?
Because Kashmiris want azadi.
Let's try that again.
What do Kashmiris want freedom from? India's Constitution.
What is offensive about India's Constitution? It is not Islamic. This is the issue, let us be clear.
The violence in Srinagar isn't for democratic self-rule because Kashmiris have that. The discomfort Kashmiris feel is about which laws self-rule must be under, and Hurriyat rejects a secular constitution.
Hurriyat deceives the world by using a universal word, azadi, to push a narrow, religious demand. Kashmiris have no confusion about what azadi means: It means Shariah. Friday holidays, amputating thieves' hands, abolishing interest, prohibiting alcohol (and kite-flying), stoning adulterers, lynching apostates and all the rest of it that comprises the ideal Sunni state.
Not one Shia gang terrorizes India; terrorism on the subcontinent is a Sunni monopoly.
There is a token Shia among the Hurriyat's bearded warriors, but it is essentially a Sunni group pursuing Sunni Shariah. Its most important figure is Umar Farooq. He's called mirwaiz, meaning head of preachers (waiz), but he inherited his title at 17 and actually is no Islamic scholar. He is English-educated, but his base is Srinagar's sullen neighbourhood of Maisuma, at the front of the stone-pelting. His following is conservative and, since he has little scholarship, he is unable to bend his constituents to his view.
Hurriyat's modernists are led by Sopore's 80-year-old Ali Geelani of Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat was founded in 1941 by a brilliant man from Maharashtra called Maududi, who invented the structure of the modern Islamic state along the lines of a Communist one. Maududi opposed Jinnah's tribal raid in Kashmir, which led to the Line of Control, saying jihad could only be prosecuted formally by a Muslim state, and not informally by militias. This wisdom was discarded later, and Hizb al-Mujahideen, starring Syed Salahuddin of cap and beard fame, is a Jamaat unit. Maududi was ecumenical, meaning that he unified the four Sunni groups of thought. He always excluded Shias, as heretics.
The Kashmiri separatist movement is actually inseparable from Sunni fundamentalism. Those on the Hurriyat's fringes who say they are Gandhians, like Yasin Malik, are carried along by the others in the group so long as the immediate task of resisting India is in common. But the Hurriyat and its aims are ultimately poisonous, even for Muslims.
The Hurriyat Conference's idea of freedom unfolds from a religious instinct, not a secular sentiment. This instinct is sectarian, and all the pro-azadi groups are Shia-killers. In promoting their hatred, the groups plead for the support of other Muslims by leaning on the name of the Prophet Muhammad.
Hafiz is a title and means memorizer of the Quran.
Mohammed Saeed's Lashkar Tayyaba means army of Tyeb (“the good“), one of the Prophet's names.
This is incorrectly spelled and pronounced by our journalists as “Taiba“ or “Toiba“, but Muslims can place the name. Lashkar rejects all law from sources other than the recorded sayings and actions of Muhammad. This is called being Wahhabi, and Wahhabis detest the Shia.
Jaish Muhammad (Muhammad's army) was founded in a Karachi mosque, and it is linked to the Shia-killing Sipah Sahaba (Army of Muhammad's First Followers) in Pakistan's Seraiki-speaking southern Punjab. The group follows a narrow, anti-Shia doctrine developed in Deoband. Decades of non-interference by the Pakistani state in the business of Kashmiri separatism has led to a loss of internal sovereignty in Pakistan. The state is no longer able to convince its citizens that it should act against these groups. Though their own Shia are regularly butchered, a poll shows that a quarter of Pakistanis think Lashkar Tayyaba does good work. We think Indian Muslims are different from Pakistanis and less susceptible to fanaticism. It is interesting that within Pakistan, the only group openly and violently opposed to Taliban and terrorism are UP and Bihar migrants who form Karachi's secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party.
So what do the separatist groups want? It is wrong to see them as being only terrorist groups. They operate in an intellectual framework, and there is a higher idea that drives the violence. This is a perfect state with an executive who is pious, male and Sunni. Such a state, where all is done according to the book, will get God to shower his blessings on the citizens, who will all be Sunnis.
There are three types of Sunnis in Kashmir. Unionists, separatists, and neutrals. Unionists, like Omar Abdullah, are secular and likely to be repelled by separatism because they have seen the damage caused by political Islam in Pakistan. They might not be in love with Indians, but they see the beauty of the Indian Constitution. Neutrals, like Mehbooba Mufti, are pragmatic and will accept the Indian Constitution when in power, though they show defiance when out of it. This is fine, because they respond to a Muslim constituency that is uncertain, but isn't totally alienated. The longer these two groups participate in democracy in Kashmir, the weaker the separatists become. The current violence is a result of this. Given their boycott of politics, the Hurriyat must rally its base by urging them to violence and most of it happens in Maisuma and Sopore. The violence should also clarify the problem in the minds of neutrals: If Kashmiri rule does not solve the azadi problem, what will?
India's liberals are defensive when debating Kashmir because of our unfulfilled promise on plebiscite. But they shouldn't be. There is really no option to secular democracy, whether one chooses it through a plebiscite or whether it is imposed. It is a universal idea and there is no second form of government in any culture or religion that works. The Islamic state is utopian and it never arrives. Since it is driven by belief, however, the search becomes quite desperate.
India has a constitution; Pakistan has editions. These are the various Pakistani constitutions: 1935 (secular), 1956 (federal), 1962 (dictatorial), 1973 (parliamentary), 1979 (Islamic), 1999 (presidential), 2008 (parliamentary).
Why do they keep changing and searching? Muslims keep trying to hammer in Islamic bits into a set of laws that is actually quite complete.
This is the Government of India Act of 1935, gifted to us by the British.
Kashmiris have it, and perhaps at some point they will learn to appreciate its beauty.
Aakar Patel will take a break from his column to write a book. He will return early next year.
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