Former Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf's take on US moves on Afghanistan-Pakistan - Opinion article in The Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574569751126911522.html?mod=WSJ_topics_obama

• OPINION
• DECEMBER 1, 2009, 11:08 P.M. ET

The Afghan-Pakistan Solution

An exit strategy must be predicated on achieving military and political goals, not 

dictated by time limits.

By PERVEZ MUSHARRAF

My recent trip to the United States has been an enriching experience, during which I had a very healthy discourse with the American public and an opportunity to understand their concerns about the war in Afghanistan. One question I was asked almost everywhere I went was, "How can we stop losing?"

The answer is a political surge, in conjunction with the additional troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Quitting is not an option.

A military solution alone cannot guarantee success. Armies can only win sometimes, and at best, create an environment for the political process to work. At the end of the day, it is civilians, not soldiers, who have to take charge of their country.

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Associated Press

U.S. Army and National Guard troops on patrol in Logar Province, Afghanistan.

After decades of civil war and anarchy, the Taliban established control over 95% of Afghanistan in 1996. Unfortunately, the Taliban imposed their strict interpretation of Islam on the country. Nevertheless, I proposed to recognize the Taliban regime, in the hope of transforming them from within. Had my strategy been enacted, we might have persuaded the Taliban to deny a safe haven to al Qaeda and avoided the tragic 9/11 attacks.

Another golden opportunity to rescue the Afghan people emerged after the United Nations sanctioned international military operation launched after 9/11. Having liberated Afghanistan from the tyranny of al Qaeda and Taliban, the U.S. had the unequivocal support of the majority of Afghans. The establishment of a truly representative national government which gave proportional representation to all ethnic groups—including the majority Pashtuns—would have brought peace to Afghanistan and ousted al Qaeda once and for all. Unfortunately this did not happen.

The political instability and ethnic imbalance in Afghanistan after 9/11 marginalized the majority Pashtuns and pushed them into the Taliban fold, even though they were not ideological supporters of the Taliban. The blunder of inducting 80,000 troops of Tajiks into the Afghan national army further alienated the Pashtuns.

Meanwhile, Pakistan forcefully tackled the influx of al Qaeda into our tribal areas, capturing over 600 al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders, some of them of very high value. We established 1,000 border checkposts and even offered to mine or fence off the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but this never came to pass. The Afghan government, led by President Hamid Karzai, had no writ outside of Kabul, and the insufficient ground troops of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) allowed the Taliban to regroup. The 2004 invasion of Iraq shifted the focus and also contributed to the Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda terrorists who fled from Afghanistan came to Pakistan and settled initially in South Waziristan. Through successful intelligence and law-enforcement operations, we eliminated al Qaeda from our cities and destroyed their command, communication and propaganda centers. They fled to the adjoining North Waziristan, Bajur and Swat regions.

From 2004 onwards, we witnessed a gradual shift in the terrorist center of gravity. The Taliban started to re-emerge in Afghanistan and gradually gained a dominant role. They developed ties with the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal areas, especially in North and South Waziristan. With a grand strategy to destabilize the whole region, the Taliban and al Qaeda established links with extremists in Pakistani society on the one hand and with Muslim fundamentalists in India on the other. They pose a grave threat to South Asia and peace in the world.

We now have to deal with a complex situation. Casualties suffered by our soldiers in the line of duty will not go wasted only if we are able to fully secure our next generations from the menace of terrorism. The exit strategy from Afghanistan must not and cannot be time related. It has to ask, "What effect do we want to create on the ground?" We must eliminate al Qaeda, dominate the Taliban militarily, and establish a representative, legitimate government in Afghanistan.

The military must ensure that we deal with insurgents from a position of strength. The dwindling number of al Qaeda elements must be totally eliminated, and the Taliban have to be dominated militarily. We must strengthen border-control measures with all possible means to isolate the militants on the Afghanistan and Pakistan sides.

The Pakistan military must continue to act strongly. Operationally, we must raise substantially more forces from within the tribal groups and equip them with more tanks and guns. On the Afghan side, the U.S. and ISAF troops must be reinforced. All of this must be done in combination with raising additional Afghan National Army troops, with significant Pashtun representation. Exploiting tribal divisions, we should also raise local militias.

On the political front, we need an invigorated dialogue with all groups in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. Afghanistan for centuries has been governed loosely through a social covenant between all the ethnic groups, under a sovereign king. This structure is needed again to bring peace and harmony. We have to reach out to Pashtun tribes and others who do not ideologically align themselves with the Taliban or al Qaeda. I have always said that "all Talibans are Pashtun, but all Pashtuns are not Taliban." Pakistan and Saudi Arabia can play pivotal roles in facilitating this outreach.

Pakistan and Afghanistan were shortsightedly abandoned to their fate by the West in 1989, in spite of the fact that they were the ones who won a victory for the Free World against the Soviet Union. This abandonment lead to a sense of betrayal amongst the people of the region. For the sake of regional and world peace, let us not repeat the same mistake.

Mr. Musharraf is a former president (2001-2008) and chief of army staff (1998-2007) of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years? - By Stephen M. Walt - FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE

Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?

By Stephen M. Walt
Mon, 11/30/2009
Foreign Policy Magazine

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/30/why_they_hate_us_ii_how_many_muslims_has_the_us_killed_in_the_past_30_years

Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region. If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions.


I heard a different take on this subject at a recent conference on U.S. relations with the Islamic world. In addition to hearing a diverse set of views from different Islamic countries, one of the other participants (a prominent English journalist) put it quite simply. "If the United States wants to improve its image in the Islamic world," he said, "it should stop killing Muslims."


Now I don't think the issue is quite that simple, but the comment got me thinking: How many Muslims has the United States killed in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims? Coming up with a precise answer to this question is probably impossible, but it is also not necessary, because the rough numbers are so clearly lopsided.


Here's my back-of-the-envelope analysis, based on estimates deliberately chosen to favor the United States. Specifically, I have taken the low estimates of Muslim fatalities, along with much more reliable figures for U.S. deaths.
 


To repeat: I have deliberately selected "low-end" estimates for Muslim fatalities, so these figures present the "best case" for the United States. Even so, the United States has killed nearly 30 Muslims for every American lost. The real ratio is probably much higher, and a reasonable upper bound for Muslim fatalities (based mostly on higher estimates of "excess deaths" in Iraq due to the sanctions regime and the post-2003 occupation) is well over one million, equivalent to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost.


Figures like these should be used with caution, of course, and several obvious caveats apply. To begin with, the United States is not solely responsible for some of those fatalities, most notably in the case of the "excess deaths" attributable to the U.N. sanctions regime against Iraq. Saddam Hussein clearly deserves much of the blame for these "excess deaths," insofar as he could have complied with Security Council resolutions and gotten the sanctions lifted or used the "oil for food" problem properly. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the United States (and the other SC members) knew that keeping the sanctions in place would cause tens of thousands of innocent people to die and we went ahead anyway.

Similarly, the United States is not solely to blame for the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq after the 2003 invasion. U.S. forces killed many Iraqis, to be sure, but plenty of Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, and foreign infiltrators were pulling triggers and planting bombs too. Yet it is still the case that the United States invaded a country that had not attacked us, dismantled its regime, and took hardly any precautions to prevent the (predictable) outbreak of violence. Having uncapped the volcano, we are hardly blameless, and that goes for pundits like Friedman who enthusiastically endorsed the original invasion.


Third, the fact that people died as a result of certain U.S. actions does not by itself mean that those policy decisions were wrong. I'm a realist, and I accept the unfortunate fact that international politics is a rough business and sometimes innocent people die as a result of actions that may in fact be justifiable. For example, I don't think it was wrong to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 or to topple the Taliban in 2001. Nor do I think it was wrong to try to catch Bin Laden -- even though people died in the attempt -- and I would support similar efforts to capture him today even if it placed more people at risk. In other words, a full assessment of U.S. policy would have to weigh these regrettable costs against the alleged benefits to the United States itself or the international community as a whole.

Yet if you really want to know "why they hate us," the numbers presented above cannot be ignored. Even if we view these figures with skepticism and discount the numbers a lot, the fact remains that the United States has killed a very large number of Arab or Muslim individuals over the past three decades. Even though we had just cause and the right intentions in some cases (as in the first Gulf War), our actions were indefensible (maybe even criminal) in others.


It is also striking to observe that virtually all of the Muslim deaths were the direct or indirect consequence of official U.S. government policy. By contrast, most of the Americans killed by Muslims were the victims of non-state terrorist groups such as al Qaeda or the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans should also bear in mind that the figures reported above omit the Arabs and Muslims killed by Israel in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. Given our generous and unconditional support for Israel's policy towards the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular, Muslims rightly hold us partly responsible for those victims too.


Contrary to what Friedman thinks, our real problem isn't a fictitious Muslim "narrative" about America's role in the region; it is mostly the actual things we have been doing in recent years. To say that in no way justifies anti-American terrorism or absolves other societies of responsibility for their own mistakes or misdeeds. But the self-righteousness on display in Friedman's op-ed isn't just simplistic; it is actively harmful. Why? Because whitewashing our own misconduct makes it harder for Americans to figure out why their country is so unpopular and makes us less likely to consider different (and more effective) approaches.


Some degree of anti-Americanism may reflect ideology, distorted history, or a foreign government's attempt to shift blame onto others (a practice that all governments indulge in), but a lot of it is the inevitable result of policies that the American people have supported in the past. When you kill tens of thousands of people in other countries -- and sometimes for no good reason -- you shouldn't be surprised when people in those countries are enraged by this behavior and interested in revenge. After all, how did we react after September 11? 




Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University. Professor Walt is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (W. W. Norton, 2005), and, with coauthor J.J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

THE NEW YORK TIMES CONDEMNS SWISS MINARET BAN AS DISGRACEFUL

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/opinion/01Tue3.html?_r=1

EDITORIAL

 

A Vote for Intolerance

Published: November 30, 2009

Disgraceful. That is the only way to describe the success of a right-wing initiative to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland, where 57 percent of voters cast ballots for a bigoted and mean-spirited measure.

Under Switzerland’s system of direct rule, the referendum is binding.Switzerland’s 400,000 or so Muslims, most of whom come from Kosovo andTurkey, are legally barred from building minarets as of now. We can only hope that the ban is quickly challenged, and that the Swiss courts will find a way to get rid of it.

But the vote also carries a strong and urgent message for all Europe, and for all Western nations where Islamic minorities have been growing in numbers and visibility, and where fear and resentment of Muslim immigrants and their religion have become increasingly strident and widespread. The warning signs have been there: the irrational fierceness of official French resistance to the shawls and burkas worn by some Muslim women; the growing opposition in many European quarters to Turkish membership in the European Union.

Terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, notably 9/11 and the attacks on London,Madrid and Mumbai, have played a role in the perception of Muslims as a security threat. But the worst response to extremism and intolerance is extremism and intolerance. Banning minarets does not address any of the problems with Muslim immigrants, but it is certain to alienate and anger them.

In Switzerland, Muslims amount to barely 6 percent of the population and there is no evidence of Islamic extremism. If its residents can succumb so easily to the propaganda of a xenophobic right-wing party, then countries with far greater Muslim populations and far more virulent strains of xenophobia best quickly start thinking about how to counter the trend.

If left unchecked, xenophobia spreads fast. Already right-wingers in theNetherlands and Denmark have called for similar measures, and others are bound to be encouraged by the success of the Swiss People’s Party.

BEWARE OF THE FBI ENTRAPMENT

http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/11/30/monteilh-fbi/

Tuesday Dec. 1st | Home » CA/Local » Man claims he spied on Muslims for FBI

Man claims he spied on Muslims for FBI

Brian Watt/KPCC

Craig Monteilh, foreground, with his attorney Adam Krolikowski outside the West Covina courthouse.

Nov. 30, 2009 | Brian Watt | KPCC

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A man who says he spied on Muslims in the Southland for the FBI says West Covina Superior Court records will back up his claim. That court will decide later this week whether to unseal those records.

Craig Monteilh, 47, is preparing to sue the FBI for $10 million. He claims his FBI handlers allowed his wrongful arrest and conviction for grand theft two years ago.

Monteilh alleges that the FBI recruited him and trained him to gain the confidence of Muslims - and to infiltrate area mosques. Monteilh said the agents encouraged him to memorize the Koran and educate himself on sensitive political topics.

"I was instructed to converse with Muslims using this knowledge to gain their confidence and obtain as much information as I possibly could about their beliefs and the beliefs of their family and friends," said Monteilh, "all the while recording them with sophisticated electronic equipment the FBI supplied to me and trained me to use."

The FBI won’t comment on his assertions.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller refuted suggestions that FBI agents send informants into mosques to entrap individuals of Muslim faith.

"It would be only fair to the Muslim American community to report that the FBI does not investigate houses of worship or religious groups," she said. "But people who are alleged to be involved in criminal activity, regardless of their affiliations, religious or otherwise."

Monteilh and his attorney say sealed West Covina Superior Court records will support his case. Along with the American Civil Liberties Union, they’ve asked the court to make those records public.

"We believe this is the first step in establishing – clearly and honestly – who Craig Monteilh is," attorney Krolikowski said.

Superior Court Judge Carol Williams Elswick said the court will review the documents and issue a decision on whether to unseal them Thursday.

Tariq Ramadan on Swiss ban on minarets | New York Times: Swiss Ban on Minaret Building Meets Widespread Criticism

My compatriots' vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear

By Tariq Ramadan

It wasn't meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34 percent of the Swiss population would vote for this shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organized in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future.
 

Today that confidence was shattered, as 57 percent of the Swiss population did as the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) had urged them to -- a worrying sign that this populist party may be closest to the people's fears and expectations. For the first time since 1893 an initiative that singles out one community, with a clear discriminatory essence, has been approved in Switzerland. One can hope that the ban will be rejected at the European level, but that makes the result no less alarming. What is happening in Switzerland, the land of my birth?

There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why is it that it is there that this initiative has been launched? My country, like many in Europe, is facing a national reaction to the new visibility of European Muslims. The minarets are but a pretext -- the UDC wanted first to launch a campaign against the traditional Islamic methods of slaughtering animals but were afraid of testing the sensitivity of Swiss Jews, and instead turned their sights on the minaret as a suitable symbol.

Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands -- and so on. It is important to look beyond these symbols and understand what is really happening in Europe in general and in Switzerland in particular: while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic -- and it is scary.

At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalizing, migratory world, “What are our roots?”, “Who are we?”, “What will our future look like?”, they see around them new citizens, new skin colors, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates -- violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, forced marriage, to name a few -- it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor. There is a great deal of fear and a palpable mistrust. Who are they? What do they want? And the questions are charged with further suspicion as the idea of Islam being an expansionist religion is intoned. Do these people want to Islamize our country?

The campaign against the minarets was fuelled by just these anxieties and allegations. Voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions. Posters featured a woman wearing a burka with the minarets drawn as weapons on a colonized Swiss flag. The claim was made that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Swiss values. (The UDC has in the past demanded my citizenship be revoked because I was defending Islamic values too openly.) Its media strategy was simple but effective. Provoke controversy wherever it can be inflamed. Spread a sense of victimhood among the Swiss people: we are under siege, the Muslims are silently colonizing us and we are losing our very roots and culture. This strategy worked. The Swiss majority are sending a clear message to their Muslim fellow citizens: we do not trust you and the best Muslim for us is the Muslim we cannot see.

Who is to be blamed? I have been repeating for years to Muslim people that they have to be positively visible, active and proactive within their respective western societies. In Switzerland, over the past few months, Muslims have striven to remain hidden in order to avoid a clash. It would have been more useful to create new alliances with all these Swiss organizations and political parties that were clearly against the initiative. Swiss Muslims have their share of responsibility but one must add that the political parties, in Europe as in Switzerland have become cowed, and shy from any courageous policies towards religious and cultural pluralism. It is as if the populists set the tone and the rest follow. They fail to assert that Islam is by now a Swiss and a European religion and that Muslim citizens are largely “integrated”. That we face common challenges, such as unemployment, poverty and violence -- challenges we must face together. We cannot blame the populists alone -- it is a wider failure, a lack of courage, a terrible and narrow-minded lack of trust in their new Muslim citizens.





Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, and hosts Islam & Life at Iran’s Press TV. 

(Source: The Guardian)

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/europe/01iht-swiss.html

Swiss Ban on Minaret Building Meets Widespread Criticism

Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Zurich mosque with a minaret. In a Swiss referendum, 57.5 percent of voters approved a ban on minaret construction.

By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Published: November 30, 2009

GENEVA — Switzerland’s political leaders faced a chorus of criticism at home and abroad on Monday over a ban on the construction of minarets that passed overwhelmingly by referendum on Sunday.

Related

The Lede: Europe Reacts to the Swiss Minaret Ban

Times Topics: Switzerland

The ban has propelled the country to the forefront of a European debate on how far countries should go to assimilate Muslim immigrants and Islamic culture.
Government ministers trying to contain the fallout voiced shock and disappointment with the result, which the Swiss establishment newspaper Le Temps called a “brutal sign of hostility” to Muslims that was “inspired by fear, fantasy and ignorance.”
The country’s justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, said that the vote was not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture, but that it reflected fears among the population.
With support for the ban from 57.5 percent of voters, however, ministers were forced to admit they had failed to quell popular anxieties about the impact of what right-wing parties have portrayed as “creeping Islamization.”
Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf acknowledged that the vote was “undeniably a reflection of the fears and uncertainties that exist among the population — concerns that Islamic fundamentalist ideas could lead to the establishment of parallel societies.”
Outside Switzerland, criticism was harsh.
“I am a bit shocked by this decision,” France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said in an interview with RTL radio, calling it “an expression of intolerance.” He added: “I hope the Swiss come back on this decision.”
Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, whose country holds the rotating presidency of theEuropean Union, described the vote as “an expression of quite a bit of prejudice and maybe even fear.”
Muslim communities in Switzerland reacted cautiously. “We were a bit shocked; we hadn’t expected this result,” Abdel Majri, the president of the League of Swiss Muslims, said in an interview. “This is another step toward Islamophobia in Switzerland and Europe in general.”
The government and most Swiss political parties had opposed the motion, he noted, attributing the size of the majority in favor of the ban to the right-wing parties’ campaign, which played on popular fears and misconceptions. “We are looking at how we can repair the situation,” he added.
Some Muslims in Europe expressed concern that there would be less understanding of the ban among Muslims living in Islamic countries who are less familiar with European politics and culture. “We are a bit afraid of the rise of extremism on both sides,” said Ayman Ali, secretary general of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe.

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

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

November 30, 2009

Europe unites to deplore Swiss ban on minarets

(Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

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

Charles Bremner in Paris

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

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

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

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

RELATED LINKS

• Swiss voters back right-wing minaret ban

• Women lead Swiss in vote to ban minarets

• Intolerance of Islam

The Swiss Government, which opposed the vote, reassured members of the faith that "this is not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture." The Conference of Swiss Bishops also criticised the result, saying that it "heightens the problems of cohabitation between religions and cultures."

Amnesty international and other rights organisations said that the change to the Swiss Constitution breached guarantees on religious freedom in the European Human Rights Convention. The Swiss Green party said that it may lodge a complaint at the Strasbourg court of Human Rights.

Swiss Muslims, who come mainly from the Balkans and Turkey, reacted with sorrow. "The most painful thing for us is not the ban on minarets, but the symbol sent by this vote," said Farhad Afshar, leader of the Swiss Coordination of Islamic Organisations. "Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community," he said.

Anger was swift from more militant wings of the Muslim world. "This is the hatred of Swiss people against Muslim communities. They do not want to see a Muslim presence in their country and this intense dislike has made them intolerant," said Maskuri Abdillah, the head of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's biggest Muslim group. He urged Muslims not to take "revenge" for the decision.

Egypt's Mufti Ali Gomaa denounced the ban on new minarets as an insult to all Muslims. "This proposal ... is not considered just an attack on freedom of beliefs, but also an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community in and outside Switzerland."

Beyond Switzerland, the vote was criticised by centre and leftwing leaders. Bernard Kouchner, a leftist who is French Foreign Minister, said that he had been shocked. Switzerland should reverse the decision quickly, he said. "If you are not allowed to build minarets, that means that religion is being oppressed."

However spokesman for Mr Sarkozy's centre-right Union for a Popular Majority, took a different line, saying that the vote showed the degree to which radical Islam was alarming Europe's citizens. Xavier Bertrand, the party leader, said that he was "not sure that minarets are needed in order to practise Islam in France".

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat (CDU) party reacted with similar caution. To criticise the Swiss ban would be counterproductive, said Wolfgang Bosbach a senior CDU MP. It reflected a fear of growing Islamisation "and this fear must be taken seriously," he said.

France's far right National Front welcomed the outcome, saying that the "elites should stop denying the aspirations and fears of the European people, who, without opposing religious freedom, reject ostentatious signs that political-religious Muslim groups want to impose."

In Italy, the anti-immigrant Northern League, said: "Switzerland is sending us a clear signal: yes to bell towers, no to minarets."

In Switzerland, Yvan Perrin, vice-president of the SVP, the largest party in the federal Parliament, said that the vote was a lesson to the elite. Swiss companies should not worry about suffering from a backlash from Muslim countries, he said. "If our companies continue to make good quality products, they have nothing to worry about."

Qurbani Stories from Mumbai - By Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, November 30, 2009

Qurbani Stories from Mumbai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

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