The international Mosque imbroglio - By Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, September 06, 2010

The international Mosque imbroglio

Much that US writers would prefer to localize the issue of Mosque at Ground Zero, or anywhere else on mainland US, there is a wider perspective that cannot be ignored if the drift of events have to be forewarned and foretold.

As I see it, the Mosque problem starts with Al Aqsa Mosque that is believed to be built over the Jewish Temple, destroyed by Romans. The Wall is still there for all the world Jewry to remind that there was once a grand Temple there. The Jews are reasonably aspiring to rebuild the old temple, preferably at the same site. The problem is that the site is now occupied for over a 1000 years by a Mosque that is the third most sacred Mosque for 1.5 billion Muslims of the world, after that of Mecca and Medina Harams(Mosque). The Aqsa Mosque was Muslim's first Qibla, the direction to which they faced while praying five times a day. Even though in 1967, Jordan lost control of the site, the city of Jerusalem; the holy sites of the 3 Abrahamanical religions are internationally recognized as disputed land. Short of getting outright and full effective control of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Israelis have to do with all kinds of ruse to make life difficult for Muslims of the city so that they should hopefully, eventually, leave the place and let Jews built its old Temple. That just is not possible in these times and age. Israel has big power, but it cannot withstand the backlash if any damaged to Al Aqsa Mosque is even rumored. Enter conspiracies. Jewish conspirators had spotted that India too has a similar case of a Mosque having been built supposedly on a site widely believed to be the site of the birth of Hindu avatar/God Ram. A doctoral thesis from US was sent over to L. K. Advani, a onetime Home Minister of a coalition government led by the extremist Hindutva politic0-religious group, who took the doctoral strategies to heart and converted 'aggression over the Mosque to translate into political power'. L. K. Advani, in one of his interviews with The Economic Times, has publicly acknowledged receiving the blue-print and adopted it to raise a grand nation-wide campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid. A big conspiracy between the two major political parties, allowed over a lakh of rabble-rouser to demolish the 500 year old structure, though in fact through implosions inside the old Mosque that caved in just like the two World Trade Center Buildings, all in heap and dust. The world media made it out that it was the sole work of demolition by an enraged mob, the Kar Sevaks. The civil suit over the ownership of the 500 year site is in the court for last decade and over, and a ruling is expected this month, September 16, 2010, probably. Big trouble is expected. But the political consideration in India may preclude major disaster, as that will deeply damage the ruling Congress Party's prospects in the coming general elections.

Zoom away from India and focus on Ground Zero. Nobody knows whose idea it was to build an 'Islamic Center' or Mosque near Ground Zero. An educated guess is that it has something to do with Democratic Party's effort to reclaim US goodwill with Muslim World, severely eroded during Bush/Cheney period. Imam Rauf is in full cooperation with US State Department and had made trips abroad pumping for US overtures to Muslim World. Naturally, all this is anathema to Republicans in general and American Jewish Neo-Cons in particular. They have wasted no time in making a big scandal about the Mosque project with a view to reposition Republicans once again in mainstream public gaze. The political fight between Democrats and Republicans has made Muslims a reluctant scapegoat and they have to assert their rights as American citizens to avail of the full freedom of religion.

It is worth noting, that in all the 3 centers of conflicts, Al Aqsa, Babri and Ground Zero, the legal land rights are all with the Muslims.

The media and mass agitation is organized and mobilized, especially by Jewish proxies, to scare Muslims in giving up their legitimate rights.

Both in India and in Jerusalem, Muslims have not given in to the arm-twisting. One hopes that American Muslims too would stand up for their constitutional rights and not be cowed down by the organized mob actions unleashed by their detractors.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

<http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com>

Writings of Ben Gurion on Pakistan

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 4:22 AM, Shuja R. Khan <khanshuja163@hotmail.com> wrote:

Writings of Ben Gurion on Pakistan

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It's funny what sort of information can be gleaned off a white nationalist. But here's some, I'd like to see your comments about - anything, even regarding whether you think it's genuine or not.

“The world Zionist movement should not be neglectful of the dangers of Pakistan to it. And Pakistan now should be its first target, for this ideological State is a threat to our existence. And Pakistan, the whole of it, hates the Jews and loves the Arabs. “This lover of the Arabs is more dangerous to us than the Arabs themselves. For that matter, it is most essential for the world Zionism that it should now take immediate steps against Pakistan. “Whereas the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula are Hindus whose hearts have been full of hatred towards Muslims, therefore, India is the most important base for us to work there from against Pakistan. “It is essential that we exploit this base and strike and crush Pakistanis, enemies of Jews and Zionism, by all disguised and secret plans.”

-David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister.His words, as printed in the Jewish Chronicle,9 August 

 

You Ain’t Seen This Before - By Thomas L. Friedman - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01friedman.html

Op-Ed Columnist

You Ain’t Seen This Before

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: August 31, 2010

President Obama is embarking on something I’ve never seen before — taking on two Missions Impossible at the same time. That is, a simultaneous effort to heal the two most bitter divides in the Middle East: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Shiite-Sunni conflict centered in Iraq. Give him his due. The guy’s got audacity. I’ll provide the hope. But kids, don’t try this at home.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

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Yet, if by some miracles the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that open in Washington on Thursday do eventually produce a two-state solution, and Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis do succeed in writing their own social contract on how to live together, one might be able to imagine a Middle East that breaks free from the debilitating grip of endless Arab-Israeli wars and autocratic Arab regimes.


President Obama deserves credit for helping to nurture these opportunities. But he, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the newly elected leaders of Iraq need to now raise their games to a whole new level to seize this moment — or their opponents will.

Precisely because so much is at stake, the forces of intolerance, extreme nationalism and religious obscurantism all over the Middle East will be going all out to make sure that both the Israeli and Iraqi peace processes fail.

The opponents want to destroy the idea of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, so Israel will be stuck with an apartheid-like, democracy-sapping, permanent occupation of the West Bank. And they want to destroy the idea of a one-state solution for Iraqis and keep Iraq fractured, so it never coheres into a multisectarian democracy that could be an example for other states in the region.
I hope that one of my personal rules about the Middle East is proved wrong — that in this region extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away.

Mr. Obama was right to keep to his troop-withdrawal schedule from Iraq. Iraqi politicians need to stand on their own. But this is tricky. The president will not be remembered for when we leave Iraq but for what happens after we leave. That is largely in Iraqi hands, but it is still very much in our interest. So we need to retain sufficient diplomatic, intelligence, Special Forces and Army training units there to promote a decent outcome.

Because all the extremists are now doubling down. Last week, insurgents aligned with Al Qaeda boasted of killing 56 innocent Iraqis. On Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen murdered four West Bank Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman; Hamas proudly claimed credit. In Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who heads the largest ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, used his Shabbat sermon to declare that he hoped the Palestinian president and his people would die. “All these evil people should perish from this world ... God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians,” Yosef said.

Trust me, this is just the throat-clearing and gun-cleaning. Wait until we have a deal. Even if Israel agrees to swap land with the Palestinians so that 80 percent of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank can stay put, it will mean that 60,000 will still have to be removed. It took Israel 55,000 soldiers to remove 8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza, which was never part of the Land of Israel. Imagine when today’s Israeli Army, where the officer corps is increasingly drawn from religious Zionists who support the settler movement, is called on to remove settlers from the West Bank.
None of this is a reason not to proceed. It is a reason to succeed. There is so much to hate about the Iraq war. The costs will never match the hoped-for outcome, but that outcome remains hugely important: the effort to build a decent, consensual government in Iraq is the most important democracy project in the world today. If Iraqi Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites can actually write a social contract for the first time in modern Arab history, it means that viable democracy is not only possible in Iraq, but everywhere in the region.

“Iraq is the Germany of the Middle East,” says Michael Young, opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star and author of a very original book about Lebanon, “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square.” “It is at the heart of the region — affecting all around it — and the country’s multi-ethnic, multisectarian population represents all the communities of the region. Right now, what is going on in Iraq represents all the worst trends in the region, but if you can make it work, it could represent the best.”
The late Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin used to say he would pursue peace with the Palestinians as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there were no peace process. That dual approach is one that Iraqi, Arab, Palestinian and Israeli moderates are all going to have to adopt. Mao said a revolution is not a dinner party, and neither is bringing revolutionary change to the Middle East. I hope the forces of moderation are up to it. The bad guys will be offering no timeouts. They know the stakes, and they will be going all the way.

In Israel, Settling for Less - By Gadi Taub - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30taub.html?pagewanted=all

In Israel, Settling for Less

By GADI TAUB

Published: August 29, 2010

WILL Israel remain a Zionist state? If so, what kind? These are the important questions in Israeli politics today, and will be looming over the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority scheduled to begin Thursday in Washington.


The secular Zionist dream was fundamentally democratic. Its proponents, from Theodor Herzl to David Ben-Gurion, sought to apply the universal right of self-determination to the Jews, to set them free individually and collectively as a nation within a democratic state. (In fact, the Zionist movement had a functioning democratic parliament even before it had a state.)

This dream is now seriously threatened by the religious settlers’ movement, Orthodox Jews whose theological version of Zionism is radically different. Although these religious settlers are relatively few — around 130,000 of the total half-a-million settlers — their actions could spell the end of the Israel we have known.

The roots of the problem have been there from the birth of modern Zionism. The relations between Herzl’s movement and Jewish Orthodoxy were uneasy from the start. After all, the Zionist movement sought to achieve by human means what Jews for two millenniums considered to be God’s work alone: the gathering of the diaspora in the land of Israel. Most rabbis therefore shunned Herzl, but not all. Some joined the movement, even formed a party within it, based on a separation of religion and politics. For them, secular Zionism was primarily a solution to the earthly predicament of the Jews; it was not so theologically laden.

But over the following decades another form of religious Zionism came to precedence, inspired by the quasi-mystical writings of Abraham Isaac Kook, who was the chief rabbi of Palestine under the British Mandate in the 1920s and ’30s. Kook saw secular Zionists as the unwitting agents of God’s providence, advancing redemption by returning Jews to their homeland.

His son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, later focused his father’s theological ideas around a single commandment: to settle all the land promised to the ancient Hebrews in the Bible. His disciples, energized by a burning messianic fervor, took Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 as confirmation of this theology and set out to fulfill its commandment. Religious enthusiasm made the movement subversive in a deep sense — adherents believed they had a divine obligation to build settlements and considered the authority of Israel’s democratic government conditional on its acceptance of what they declared to be God’s politics.

Although religious settlers often describe themselves as heirs of the early Zionist pioneers, they are anything but. Herzl’s vision was about liberating people, while theirs is about achieving a mystical reunion between the people of Israel and the land of Israel. Herzl’s view stemmed from the ideals of the Enlightenment and the tradition of democratic national liberation movements, dating back to the American and French Revolutions; religious settlers are steeped in blood-and-soil nationalism. Herzl never doubted that Israeli Arabs should have full and equal rights. For religious settlers, Arabs are an alien element in the organic unity of Jews and their land.
The consequences of these differences are huge. If the settlers achieve their manifest goal — making Israel’s hold on the territories permanent — it will mean the de facto annexation of a huge Arab population and will force a decision about their status. In Israel proper, the Arab minority represents about a fifth of its 7.2 million citizens, and they have full legal equality. But between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, there are roughly equal numbers of Arabs and Jews today.
Even if Israel annexed only the West Bank, it would more than double its Arab population. With birthrates in the territories far exceeding those of Arabs and Jews within Israel, Jews would soon enough be a minority. This would void the very idea of a Jewish democratic state.

Israel would have to choose between remaining democratic but not Jewish, or remaining Jewish by becoming non-democratic. Israel’s enemies have long maintained that Zionism is racism and that Israel is an apartheid state. If the settlers succeed, they will turn this lie into truth.

In fact, the former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, once the great patron of the settlers, was one of the first politicians on the right to accept that the settlers’ dream is hopeless. That is why he led Israel out of Gaza in 2005. But not all have followed him. The secular Israeli right has abandoned the idea of annexation but still favors settlement on short-term (and short-sighted) security grounds.
Preserving military rule over the territories, they believe, is necessary to keep terrorism in check, and the settlements demonstrate Israel’s resolve. Although the occupation and the suspension of Palestinian rights are officially temporary, the right wing aspires to keep Arabs indefinitely in quasi-colonial status. Given the Palestinians’ refusal to sign a peace deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s predecessors, many Israelis who oppose the settlements and occupation in principle have thrown up their hands and accepted this situation, too.

But the status quo cannot last — and Israelis and their supporters need to confront this fact. The most pressing problem with the settlements is not that they are obstacles to a final peace accord, which is how settlement critics have often framed the issue. The danger is that they will doom Zionism itself.

If the road to partition is blocked, Israel will be forced to choose between two terrible options: Jewish-dominated apartheid or non-Jewish democracy. If Israel opts for apartheid, as the settlers wish, Israel will betray the beliefs it was founded on, become a pariah state and provoke the Arab population to an understandable rebellion. If a non-Jewish democracy is formally established, it is sure to be dysfunctional. Fatah and Hamas haven’t been able to reconcile their differences peacefully and rule the territories — throwing a large Jewish population into the mix is surely not going to produce a healthy liberal democracy. Think Lebanon, not Switzerland.

In truth, both options — and indeed all “one-state solutions” — lead to the same end: civil war. That is why the settlement problem should be at the top of everyone’s agenda, beginning with Israel’s. The religious settlement movement is not just secular Zionism’s ideological adversary, it is a danger to its very existence. Terrorism is a hazard, but it cannot destroy Herzl’s Zionist vision. 

More settlements and continued occupation can.

Gadi Taub, an assistant professor of communications and public policy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is the author of “The Settlers.”

 

SAFFRON TERROR, THE NEW ENTRANT IN US MAINLAND By Ghulam Muhammed

Friday, August 27, 2010

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: SAFFRON TERROR, THE NEW ENTRANT IN US MAINLAND

America’s Home Land Security Department has its hands full with Islamic ‘terrorism’ within the country and abroad too. However, if India’s Home minister P. Chidambarms’s  clear warning in the parliament about ‘Saffron Terrorism’ has opened a Pandora’s Box and news is gradually filtering that Saffron elements are active in the US at different levels. The arrest of an Indian film maker Jay Kumar at a Texas airport with Jihadi literature and brass knuckles, together with a host of material on the art of spying, has shocked India. Jay Kumar with the extremist RSS links had been invited to address a Hindu gathering in Texas. It shows that there does exist in the US various religious or religio-social groups, with links to India’s extremist terrorist organizations that have now become an open secret in India. RSS, which was formed back in 1925, had nurtured grass root cadre who took part in organized communal riots, even with the connivance of the British administration. They were helpful in clearing up land for the benefit of Jain Industrialists, who were part of a collective conspiracy to rob Muslims of their villages and agricultural lands. Their specially is to fight Muslims. They have been so persuasive and efficient that when a single of their cadre in the air control tower could easily give wrong instructions to two airplanes, one from Saudia and another from Kazkhakistan that resulted in mid-air collision. All 349 people on board both flights were killed, making it the deadliest mid-air collision in history. The whole episode was so efficiently managed that the air-controller was never heard from. Instead, RSS cadre descended on the clash sites on the pretext of providing humananitarian aid, though in fact scourging the area for any tell-tale evidence, which were wiped out. It is interesting to note how Lockerbee disaster was continuously monitored and security agencies from different countries collaborated to bring out the correct picute. Nothing like happened in case of Charkhi Dadri, Haryana in India. That shows how much Congress government is hand and glove the extremists.

Another warning was raised by Dr. Omar Khalidi of Waltham, MA, about the proposed visit of one RSS rabble rouser, Kumari Rathambara, who played a major role in mass movement leading to the pulling down of the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhaya. Thousands innocent died in communal riots organized by Saffron cadre, all over the country. If she is coming to US, that means she could be having an agenda that may or may not be in consonance with US policies in India, especially concerning either Indian Muslims or the Muslim world at large. Saffron extremist find ready help, assistance and support from extremist Zionists of the type that have blown of the matter of Zero Ground Mosque. Both groups posed themselves the chosen people of the world and thus find natural affinity.

An earlier attempt for Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is widely believed to be behind the state sponsored Gujarat genocidal riots, was early nibbed in but, when State Department refused to give him a via, apprehesive of widespread demonstration against him in the US.

The recent upsurge in Hindu extremist entry into US mainland is possibly an organized attempt to present the US administration with some fait accompli, about their anti-social activities, their anti-Muslim agenda, their media savvy, and their identification with other anti-Muslim groups in the US. A face-off between the two sides, will further disturb America’s communal harmony. The reaction of Muslims whether Indian or world Muslims, is still in the offing. It will appear once the Saffron show their true colors in the US. It is better for Homeland Security to be forewarned. Raj Kumar's US visa was cancelled instantly, even before any court proceedings against him. Such vigilance in issuing of US visa to dubious extremist characters from India would go a long way in maintaining peace.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

<http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com>

A strange crusade - By Ashok Malik - Hindustan Times

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A clash between two Americas over the Ground Zero Mosque - BY SWAPAN DASGUPTA - THE FREE PRESS JOURNAL

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

THE FREE PRESS JOURNAL

A clash between two Americas over the Ground Zero Mosque



The battle between the lofty embellishments of Republicanism and populist democracy has re- surfaced in the passionate controversy over the proposed construction of an Islamic Centre, better known as Ground- Zero Mosque, on a site a stone’s throw from where the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre stood till that horrible September 11 morning.

BY SWAPAN DASGUPTA

IN an essay published in 1985, Irving Kristol, the ‘godfather of the Neoconservative movement’, quoted a political scientist as saying American democracy is based on one key assumption: “that the people are usually sensible, but rarely wise.” The American system of government, with its elaborate checks and balances and separation of powers, he contended, was geared towards ensuring that the popular will would ultimately prevail.

The operative term was “ultimately”. “ Short of the ultimate”, Kristol wrote, “ the Founders thought it appropriate that popular sentiments should be delayed in their course, refracted in their expression, revised in their enactment, so that a more deliberate public opinion could prevail over a transient public opinion.” Kristol was addressing a debate then raging in the US over school prayer and crime and liberal fears of a rampaging populism that would brush aside the principles on which the Republic had been founded. The debate, in any case, was not new. Throughout its history, the US has led a schizoid existence. Till the defeat of the southern Confederacy in the Civil War, its lofty espousal of freedom jarred against the reality of slavery; and till President Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights legislation, some Americans could well have been said to be more equal than others.

Nor was it a case of some white bigots in the southern states violating the enlightened principles that shaped the US Constitution.

Dixieland’s resistance to the complete abolition of slavery was based on the principle that individual states of the Republic had a right to choose their own course of action, unhindered by Federal intrusiveness and Yankee notions of correctness. Both sides in the Civil War could fall back on both public opinion and the Constitution.

The dispute was, quite predictably, settled by force- not merely in the battlefield of Gettysburg but again a hundred years later in Birmingham, Alabama, when federal forces were dispatched to escort a handful of scared Black students to a de- segregated school.

The battle between the lofty embellishments of Republicanism and populist democracy has re- surfaced in the passionate controversy over the proposed construction of an Islamic Centre, better known as Ground- Zero Mosque, on a site a stone’s throw from where the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre stood till that horrible September 11 morning. Coming in the wake of the mid- term elections to the US Congress, the controversy has escalated into a clash between two Americas- one which ostensibly swears by the Constitution and one which waves the Flag.

If the editorial columns of the ‘ respectable’ media are any indication, it is a simple battle between ( pro- mosque) enlightenment and ( anti- mosque) bigotry.

The former has the unequivocal backing of intellectuals, the First Amendment and critical endorsements from President Barak Obama and the Mayor of New York.

The latter may be burdened by the philological clumsiness of Sarah Palin, the Islamophobia of Newt Gingrich and absence from the soirées of Manhattan, but it has the endorsement ( or so the polls say) of nearly two- thirds of America. This has been compelling enough, particularly in an election year, for Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and New York Governor David Paterson to call for a review of the project. The force of public indignation against Cordova House, as the Islamic Centre will be called, was also sufficient to transform Obama’s categorical support at the White House "iftar" into evasive waffle a day later, prompting one writer to dub him a “ stubborn man without conviction”. On the face of it, the pro-mosque lobby is on strong grounds. The US Constitution allows every citizen the unhindered right to both preach and practice faith, without any interference from the state. The rigid separation of state and faith, which was originally intended to forestall any partiality to or discrimination against non- conformist Christian sects, has now come to the aid of a religion that is outside the Judaeo- Christian framework. The universalism of their Constitution has now come to haunt Americans.

The opposition to Cordova House isn’t based on a challenge to the constitutional right of Muslims to build either a mosque or a community centre. The issue is the alleged ‘ insensitivity’ ( some would say provocation) of building it so close to a place where 3,000 people were killed by terrorists claiming to speak for Islam. Would it be proper, ask the sceptics, to build a Japanese war memorial at Pearl Harbour? The promoters of the project have claimed that Cordova House is aimed at promoting inter- faith understanding. However, this has been greeted by scepticism on account of a history of Islamic triumphalism and the tendency of Muslim rulers in distant lands to build a mosque to commemorate a victory. Regardless of the intentions of the Imam in charge of the project, and even his reputation as an authority on Sufism, the fear is that sooner or later the building will come to symbolise a victory monument and become a hub of Islamist extremism. Sinister meaning has even been attached to the use of Cordova, a city that once symbolised Islam’s inroads into the Christian world.

Curiously, one facet of the controversy appears to be troubling both the liberal, non- Muslim supporters of the mosque and their flag- waving opponents. Both fear that whatever the final outcome, the controversy will sharpen the polarisation between Islam and the West and have a negative impact on US foreign policy in the Islamic world. The fear is justified although, ironically, the debate over Cordova House is only peripherally a tussle between Islam and America. The controversy is really another chapter in the battle between the Republic and democracy.

Americans, a historian presciently observed, “ Americans erected their constitutional roof before they put up their national walls... and the Constitution became a substitute for a deeper kind of national identity.” The problem was initially addressed by two filters: the first by an enforced compromise between the brash ‘ frontier spirit’ and lofty ‘ aristocratic’ values, and secondly, by forcing newcomers into a melting pot of Judaeo- Christian values. However, the evolution of the American ‘ nation’ appears to have been derailed by the emergence of a new, disparate America which may in time resemble an ethnic menagerie, bound by a Constitution that was written with a relatively cohesive society in mind.

The groundswell from below over the Ground Zero sacrilege constitutes the spirited protest of an older and somewhat endangered ‘ national identity’ which appeared to have been subsumed by the Obama landslide of 2008 but is actually alive and kicking. It is basically a plea to the governing elites - where the liberal self- image counts for too much - to not allow permissiveness to override common decencies.

A mosque overlooking the scene of the 9/ 11 won’t reinforce America’s image as a haven of enlightened tolerance; it may set it apart as a country unable to distinguish between right and wrong.