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
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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/
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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.
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.
Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mumbai-builder-rizvi-clashes-with-obama-s-islam-envoy_1418554
Mumbai builder Rizvi clashes with Obama’s Islam envoy
Published: Wednesday, Aug 4, 2010, 2:28 IST
By Uttarika Kumaran, Ashutosh Shukla
Place: Mumbai
Agency: DNA
What was supposed to be a goodwill gesture turned into an unexpected face-off between two men with distinct points of view about US policies and their historical consequences in the Muslim world.
Rashad Hussain, US president Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference (IOC), the second largest international body, was on a day’s visit to the city to deliver a lecture titled ‘The Obama Administration’s Outreach to the Muslim World’.
Meeting with the press and students of Rizvi College of Architecture, Hussain was in his element as he listed the Obama administration’s efforts in the field of education, science and technology, entrepreneurship and health to reach out to the global Muslim community and bridge the gaps created by past US
governments.
Akhtar Hasan Rizvi, prominent builder and education baron, sat calm and composed as Hussain spoke. When it was his turn on the dais, Rizvi politely welcomed his guest and gave a brief disclaimer, saying, “I welcome the move and support it but doubt the US president’s success.”
Thereafter, the general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party and former Parliamentarian didn’t mince his words, citing grouses which the Muslim community has held for decades against the US. “America gave birth to terrorism and the Jewish policy needs to be controlled,” Rizvi told a visibly shaken Hussain.
"Obama has to begin from the root. If you treat the symptom, it’ll be a temporary cure. You have to treat the disease. And that started 45 years ago,” said Rizvi, referring to America’s backing of Israel during the Palestine crisis, “There would have been no war of 1967 if you had not supported Israel.”
He added, “You gave weapons of mass destruction to Iraq against Iran and then you went hunting for them and could not find them.”
“You made nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons in order to control the whole world. First, America should correct that wrong and stop the supremacy policy,” said Rizvi.
Backing Iran’s right to produce nuclear weapons, Rizvi emphasised, “Israel has not adhered to so many resolutions. Why not pull them up? Every nation has the right to produce nuclear weapons for their survival, why stop them?” He further questioned America’s blundered policy in Vietnam, as well as its hand in creating Taliban and then fearing it.
“I apologise for what I’ve said but I have to lay down the plain facts for you to correct the wrongs you have done,” Rizvi said in the midst of considerable cheering.
Unable to stomach the “conspiracy theories” Rizvi brought up, Hussain responded, “In a school of architecture, the emphasis should be on building, and going forward. Not on going backward, living in the past, and spreading conspiracy theories which are dis-empowering.”
“I reject anti-Semitism. Something Islam and the Prophet rejected. To speak about an entire religious group in such a negative way is wrong and I don’t think it reflects reality,” said the envoy adding, “In a school of architecture, I would expect the future belongs to those who build and not to those who destroy.”
Mumbai builder Rizvi clashes with Obama’s Islam envoy
Published: Wednesday, Aug 4, 2010, 2:28 IST
By Uttarika Kumaran, Ashutosh Shukla
Place: Mumbai
Agency: DNA
What was supposed to be a goodwill gesture turned into an unexpected face-off between two men with distinct points of view about US policies and their historical consequences in the Muslim world.
Rashad Hussain, US president Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference (IOC), the second largest international body, was on a day’s visit to the city to deliver a lecture titled ‘The Obama Administration’s Outreach to the Muslim World’.
Meeting with the press and students of Rizvi College of Architecture, Hussain was in his element as he listed the Obama administration’s efforts in the field of education, science and technology, entrepreneurship and health to reach out to the global Muslim community and bridge the gaps created by past US
governments.
Akhtar Hasan Rizvi, prominent builder and education baron, sat calm and composed as Hussain spoke. When it was his turn on the dais, Rizvi politely welcomed his guest and gave a brief disclaimer, saying, “I welcome the move and support it but doubt the US president’s success.”
Thereafter, the general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party and former Parliamentarian didn’t mince his words, citing grouses which the Muslim community has held for decades against the US. “America gave birth to terrorism and the Jewish policy needs to be controlled,” Rizvi told a visibly shaken Hussain.
"Obama has to begin from the root. If you treat the symptom, it’ll be a temporary cure. You have to treat the disease. And that started 45 years ago,” said Rizvi, referring to America’s backing of Israel during the Palestine crisis, “There would have been no war of 1967 if you had not supported Israel.”
He added, “You gave weapons of mass destruction to Iraq against Iran and then you went hunting for them and could not find them.”
“You made nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons in order to control the whole world. First, America should correct that wrong and stop the supremacy policy,” said Rizvi.
Backing Iran’s right to produce nuclear weapons, Rizvi emphasised, “Israel has not adhered to so many resolutions. Why not pull them up? Every nation has the right to produce nuclear weapons for their survival, why stop them?” He further questioned America’s blundered policy in Vietnam, as well as its hand in creating Taliban and then fearing it.
“I apologise for what I’ve said but I have to lay down the plain facts for you to correct the wrongs you have done,” Rizvi said in the midst of considerable cheering.
Unable to stomach the “conspiracy theories” Rizvi brought up, Hussain responded, “In a school of architecture, the emphasis should be on building, and going forward. Not on going backward, living in the past, and spreading conspiracy theories which are dis-empowering.”
“I reject anti-Semitism. Something Islam and the Prophet rejected. To speak about an entire religious group in such a negative way is wrong and I don’t think it reflects reality,” said the envoy adding, “In a school of architecture, I would expect the future belongs to those who build and not to those who destroy.”
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Crisis compounded by multiple sieges -By Shail Mayaram - TOI - Crest
http://timesofindia.
Shail Mayaram, Jul 17, 2010, 12.23pm IST
Shail Mayaram
The siege of Gaza is only one kind of siege that is currently in operation in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Gaza, of course, represents one of the gravest humanitarian crises in the world. During my recent stay in Israel, conversations with a number of persons brought home the many ways in which it has been reduced to a slum — even water sources smell of ammunition! In effect, Israel’s actions against Gaza have created a wave of sympathy in world opinion overturning the initial revulsion to Hamas violence and this includes its particularly vicious bombing known as Operation Cast Lead and the subsequent siege that it has enforced along with Egypt. Later this month, 4,000 persons will be on aboard Freedom Flotilla no 2, representing an international coalition of 32 countries and will once again defy the siege.
Ironically, the siege is being enforced by a selfproclaimed Jewish democracy to protect Israeli Jews, who of all people in the world should know best what the experience of a siege is. President Nasser closed Israel’s own access to the Suez Canal in 1956 and in 1967 once again blocked Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat denying its ships access to the Straits of Tiran. But there are older accounts in Jewish history and memory of Roman sieges.
The Roman Empire’s siege and fall of Jerusalem between 66 and 74 BCE is one of the most painful episodes of Jewish history. Jewish collective suicide at Masada is recounted by Josephus Flavius following the siege of the Romans and the breaching of the hitherto impregnable rock fortress. Josephus also tells the story of the siege of Jotpata, a city in the Galilee in which 40 notables had taken refuge in a cave till a woman gave them away to the Romans. He and another woman were the only survivors following collective death of the rest.
Masada has become iconic for contemporary Jewish nationalism , yet the Israeli state fails to comprehend that it is reproducing for Palestinians the imperialism of Rome multiplied manifold by modern technologies of violence. A series of sieges are identifiable in its post-1967 occupation policy.
The work of colonialism and nationalism thrives on boundaries and Israel is caught in the tragic-drama of its own line drawing exercise. Jerusalem, which is possibly the central issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being suffocated as never before in its history and by a state for which Jerusalem is a founding myth. Studies conducted by the International Peace and Cooperation Center show the creation of a belt of settlements around Jerusalem, the coming to an end of the Moroccon Quarter, dispossession in the Muslim Quarter while the Jewish Quarter has been expanded sixfold from 20 dunums to 120 dunums. Since the mid-80 s Sharon had begun the policy of Judaising Muslim and Christian Quarters and began supporting the movement of extremist groups into these areas to fulfill the Zionist vision of the Old City.
The newer boundaries not only encircle but also build over. This is manifested in the way in which Jews have been given rights to build on the roofs of Palestinian homes both in Jaffa (the old city of Tel Aviv) and in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem. As always, the new Jewish settlers work through Palestinian collaborator-tenants .
There is even a messianic hope to build a Third Temple over the Muslim holy site of Haram al-Sharif , where the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension on the horse Burraq is said to have taken place. Archaeological excavations continue unabated and have led to countless protests but to no effect.
Jerusalem has been for the last 500 years a multi-ethnic , multi-religious city conserved by its Turko-Arab character. The mosaic character typifies the Muslim city and was a product of organic growth. State planning and housing have now become the twin instruments of sovereignty, added to which is the Judaicisation of the names of streets and neighbourhoods.
Even as Jerusalem is seemingly “united” under Israeli sovereignty, it has become the paradigmatic divided city, ethnically and nationally. In effect, international civil society became complicit in this by its endorsement of the Oslo Agreement of 1993 that was to have given autonomy to Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza Strip but excluded the Palestinian National Authority from East Jerusalem that had been the political centre both for the Jordanian State in the West Bank and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Since 1967, Israel has confiscated 25,000 dunns of Arab lands for Jewish settlements, prohibiting any Palestinian settlements in West Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem has been cut off from the West Bank, yet another siege symbolised by a regime of checkpoints and permits. A 700-km wall built in violation of international law according to the International Court of Justice extends Israeli sovereignty and severs Palestinians from Israeli Arabs. As observers point out, the wall had been planned prior to the suicide bombings that were later used to justify it and came about when fears were expressed of a growing Palestinian population.
The very suburbs of Jerusalem have been wrenched from it. My drive to the Al Quds campus at Abu Dis now takes almost half an hour instead of the 5-10 minutes it would normally take from the German Colony in Jerusalem. Like many other suburbs, it has been separated from East Jerusalem. Indeed, all three Palestinian universities , including those of Bir Zeit and Bethlehem, have been affected (in the case of Al Quds, the wall was to go through its football field until its President, Sari Nusseibeh, interceded with Condoleeza Rice) as students from East Jerusalem are no longer able to access these institutions.
And then there are the less visible lines — the ways in which an invisible boundary has been drawn around Gaza and farmers have been forced out of the buffer zone surrounding it. The Al Jahaleen Bedouins who have been uprooted from their environment in Abu Dis and resettled along the outer wall.
The Israelis have to understand that Israel was the gift of the Arabs to them. No western country would have allowed the creation of a Jewish state on its territory. Unknowingly the Arabs abetted in its making by selling them their land. What is going to be Israel’s gift to the Arabs? Surely not imperialism’s gift of lines, borders and sieges.
The writer is Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
Ironically, the siege is being enforced by a selfproclaimed Jewish democracy to protect Israeli Jews, who of all people in the world should know best what the experience of a siege is. President Nasser closed Israel’s own access to the Suez Canal in 1956 and in 1967 once again blocked Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat denying its ships access to the Straits of Tiran. But there are older accounts in Jewish history and memory of Roman sieges.
The Roman Empire’s siege and fall of Jerusalem between 66 and 74 BCE is one of the most painful episodes of Jewish history. Jewish collective suicide at Masada is recounted by Josephus Flavius following the siege of the Romans and the breaching of the hitherto impregnable rock fortress. Josephus also tells the story of the siege of Jotpata, a city in the Galilee in which 40 notables had taken refuge in a cave till a woman gave them away to the Romans. He and another woman were the only survivors following collective death of the rest.
Masada has become iconic for contemporary Jewish nationalism , yet the Israeli state fails to comprehend that it is reproducing for Palestinians the imperialism of Rome multiplied manifold by modern technologies of violence. A series of sieges are identifiable in its post-1967 occupation policy.
The work of colonialism and nationalism thrives on boundaries and Israel is caught in the tragic-drama of its own line drawing exercise. Jerusalem, which is possibly the central issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being suffocated as never before in its history and by a state for which Jerusalem is a founding myth. Studies conducted by the International Peace and Cooperation Center show the creation of a belt of settlements around Jerusalem, the coming to an end of the Moroccon Quarter, dispossession in the Muslim Quarter while the Jewish Quarter has been expanded sixfold from 20 dunums to 120 dunums. Since the mid-80 s Sharon had begun the policy of Judaising Muslim and Christian Quarters and began supporting the movement of extremist groups into these areas to fulfill the Zionist vision of the Old City.
The newer boundaries not only encircle but also build over. This is manifested in the way in which Jews have been given rights to build on the roofs of Palestinian homes both in Jaffa (the old city of Tel Aviv) and in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem. As always, the new Jewish settlers work through Palestinian collaborator-tenants .
There is even a messianic hope to build a Third Temple over the Muslim holy site of Haram al-Sharif , where the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension on the horse Burraq is said to have taken place. Archaeological excavations continue unabated and have led to countless protests but to no effect.
Jerusalem has been for the last 500 years a multi-ethnic , multi-religious city conserved by its Turko-Arab character. The mosaic character typifies the Muslim city and was a product of organic growth. State planning and housing have now become the twin instruments of sovereignty, added to which is the Judaicisation of the names of streets and neighbourhoods.
Even as Jerusalem is seemingly “united” under Israeli sovereignty, it has become the paradigmatic divided city, ethnically and nationally. In effect, international civil society became complicit in this by its endorsement of the Oslo Agreement of 1993 that was to have given autonomy to Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza Strip but excluded the Palestinian National Authority from East Jerusalem that had been the political centre both for the Jordanian State in the West Bank and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Since 1967, Israel has confiscated 25,000 dunns of Arab lands for Jewish settlements, prohibiting any Palestinian settlements in West Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem has been cut off from the West Bank, yet another siege symbolised by a regime of checkpoints and permits. A 700-km wall built in violation of international law according to the International Court of Justice extends Israeli sovereignty and severs Palestinians from Israeli Arabs. As observers point out, the wall had been planned prior to the suicide bombings that were later used to justify it and came about when fears were expressed of a growing Palestinian population.
The very suburbs of Jerusalem have been wrenched from it. My drive to the Al Quds campus at Abu Dis now takes almost half an hour instead of the 5-10 minutes it would normally take from the German Colony in Jerusalem. Like many other suburbs, it has been separated from East Jerusalem. Indeed, all three Palestinian universities , including those of Bir Zeit and Bethlehem, have been affected (in the case of Al Quds, the wall was to go through its football field until its President, Sari Nusseibeh, interceded with Condoleeza Rice) as students from East Jerusalem are no longer able to access these institutions.
And then there are the less visible lines — the ways in which an invisible boundary has been drawn around Gaza and farmers have been forced out of the buffer zone surrounding it. The Al Jahaleen Bedouins who have been uprooted from their environment in Abu Dis and resettled along the outer wall.
The Israelis have to understand that Israel was the gift of the Arabs to them. No western country would have allowed the creation of a Jewish state on its territory. Unknowingly the Arabs abetted in its making by selling them their land. What is going to be Israel’s gift to the Arabs? Surely not imperialism’s gift of lines, borders and sieges.
The writer is Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
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