Bush: After Iraq, Iran?

By Vincent Jauvert
Le Nouvel Observateur

Week of Thursday 25 January 2007

Intimidation or Strike Preparations?

The American president assured Jacques Chirac that he still favored diplomacy with respect to Iran. Yet indicators of war preparations against the Islamic Republic are increasing.

John Rockefeller is one of the best-informed men in the United States. The most important civilian and military officials file through his office. Chairman of the powerful Senate intelligence committee, he has access to most top-secret documents produced by the Bush administration. Ordinarily, this Democratic senator is not talkative. Yet, last Friday, he saw fit to confide in the New York Times. He is very worried about White House plans for Iran. "To be honest," he said, "I'm afraid it will be Iraq all over again."

He's not alone. Last week, several Democratic leaders rang the same alarm bell: according to them, the White House is secretly preparing America for a war against the Islamic Republic. Many specialists share their concerns. A former military professor, Colonel Sam Gardiner, is closely following the deployment of American forces to the Persian Gulf. He explains: "Soon there will be two aircraft carriers in the regions: the USS Eisenhower, which arrived several weeks ago, and the USS Stennis, which sailed January 16th." Yet, every time America has deployed two aircraft carriers to the region, bombing ensued.

There are other indications of war preparations against Iran. When, at the beginning of January, he presented his new battle plan for Iraq, George Bush announced that America was about to deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries in the region - probably the Gulf States. "Why is he doing that? What has it got to do with the war in Iraq?" asks Trita Parsi, a specialist in American-Iranian relations based in Washington. "The Iraqi insurgents have no ballistic missiles, so what good does it do to install anti-missile batteries? I can see only one reason: last year, Iranian officials let the Gulf States know that if America attacked Iran from their territory, the Islamic Republic would strike back at them. Consequently, Washington wants to protect them against such a riposte. [This seems to be] proof that an attack is being seriously contemplated."

That's not all. George Bush has just named Admiral William J. Fallon as commander of American forces in the Europe-Middle East region. Why an admiral for such a position, when the war in Iraq is a ground war? Several specialists see it as an obvious signal that the aircraft carriers will soon come into action against Iran. The same observers note that the number of American submarines crossing the Gulf has increased to the point where accidents with civilian vessels are on the rise. They also observe that after three years of slowed operations, the Incirlik American Air Force base in Turkey, close to Iran, is now operating at full capacity and that several F-16 are stationed there again. They add that the F-16 can carry the B61-11 atomic mini-bombs, the so-called "bunker busters," i.e. able to destroy bunkers - and consequently the nuclear installations Iran is hiding underground.

The White House intimates that all of that is only gesticulation, that the preparations have no other motive than to intimidate Iran, to force Tehran to give up supporting Shia militia in Iraq, and to demonstrate more flexibility with respect to the nuclear issue. At the Elysee, they say they believe this version. "In September, George Bush repeated to Jacques Chirac that, with respect to the Iranian matter, he did not favor the military route, but diplomacy," an adviser to the French president explains. "We think he is still of the same mind." A great many American politicians, including Republicans, are not so optimistic. They think that in spite of the Iraqi quagmire - or perhaps because of it - George Bush has decided to dispose of the "Iranian threat," alone or with Israel; that he wants to go down in history as the one who rid the West of the devil Ahmadinejad. Alarmed by the sound of boots, several senators are looking for a way to prevent such a catastrophic scenario. Some even intend to adopt a law prohibiting the president from starting a nuclear war against Iran without Congress's approval. And they want to act quickly.

Because it's becoming urgent. "The military preparations will be complete by the end of February," Colonel Gardiner explains. And this timing is in no way coincidental. Several casus belli will offer themselves at that time. First, the deadline given Iran to execute Security Council Resolution 1737 will be up at that time. Second, Russia will deliver nuclear fuel for the Busher reactor in Iran - which could, after use, serve to manufacture an atomic weapon. Finally, Ahmadinejad will probably announce that the 3,000 Natanz centrifuges have begun uranium enrichment: a point of no return in the race to the bomb, assert the Israeli hawks and neo-conservatives close to Bush - who are burning for a fight.

Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012607G.shtml

Revealed: US Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

By Greg Mitchell
Editor & Publisher

One of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh "interrogation techniques."

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq so her death drew wide press attention. A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian."

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, unsatisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told E&P today. He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here’s what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston now works, reported yesterday:

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed...."

She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.

The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, revealing that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.

Peterson's father, Rich Peterson, has said: "Alyssa volunteered to change assignments with someone who did not want to go to Iraq."

Alyssa Peterson, a devout Mormon, had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and then sent to the Middle East in 2003.

The Arizona Republic article had opened: "Friends say Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson of Flagstaff always had an amazing ability to learn foreign languages.

"Peterson became fluent in Dutch even before she went on an 18-month Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission to the Netherlands in the late 1990s. Then, she cruised through her Arabic courses at the military's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., shortly after enlisting in July 2001.

"With that under her belt, she was off to Iraq to conduct interrogations and translate enemy documents."

On a "fallen heroes" message board on the Web, Mary W. Black of Flagstaff wrote, "The very day Alyssa died, her Father was talking to me at the Post Office where we both work, in Flagstaff, Az., telling me he had a premonition and was very worried about his daughter who was in the military on the other side of the world. The next day he was notified while on the job by two army officers. Never has a daughter been so missed or so loved than she was and has been by her Father since that fateful September day in 2003. He has been the most broken man I have ever seen."

An A.W. from Los Angeles wrote: "I met Alyssa only once during a weekend surfing trip while she was at DLI. Although our encounter was brief, she made a lasting impression. We did not know each other well, but I was blown away by her genuine, sincere, sweet nature. I don’t know how else to put it - she was just nice.... I was devastated to here of her death. I couldn’t understand why it had to happen to such a wonderful person."

Finally, Daryl K. Tabor of Ashland City, Tenn., who had met her as a journalist in Iraq for the Kentucky New Era paper in Hopkinsville: "Since learning of her death, I cannot get the image of the last time I saw her out of my mind. We were walking out of the tent in Kuwait to be briefed on our flights into Iraq as I stepped aside to let her out first. Her smile was brighter than the hot desert sun. Peterson was the only soldier I interacted with that I know died in Iraq. I am truly sorry I had to know any."

Source: http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/66/23558

Summarised Sachar Report on Status of Indian Muslims

Report of the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee (headed by Justice Rajindar Sachar) on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India

Summarised by Dr. Syed Zafar Mahmood
The Milli Gazette
13 December 2006

While issuing notification during March 2005 the Prime Minister’s Office had noted that there is lack of authentic information about the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community of India. The PMO had observed that such lack of information comes in the way of planning, formulating and implementing specific interventions, policies and programmes to address the issues relating to the socio-economic backwardness of this community. Hence, the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee was mandated to obtain relevant information from departments / agencies of the Central and State Governments and also conduct an intensive literature survey to identify published data, articles and research on relevant status of Muslims in India. The Committee was to find out the asset base and income levels of Muslims relative to other groups across various states and regions. It had to find out the level of socio-economic development of Muslims in terms of relevant indicators such as religious rate, drop out rate, MMR, IMR etc. What is their relative share in public and private sector employment? Is this share in proportion to their population in various states? If not, what are the hurdles? The Committee was to find the proportion of OBCs from the Muslim community in the total OBC population. Are the Muslim OBCs listed in the comprehensive list of OBCs, prepared by the National and State Backward Classes Commissions. What is the share of Muslim OBCs in the total public sector employment for OBCs. The Committtee had also to find out whether the Muslim community has adequate access to the education and health services, municipal infrastructure, bank credit and other services provided by the Government and public sector entities. This was to be compared with the access enjoyed by the other communities. What is the level of social infrastructure (schools, health centres, ICDS centres etc.) located in areas of Muslim concentration in comparison to the general level of such infrastructure. The Committee was to identify areas of intervention by the Government to address the relevant issues relating to the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community.

2. The Report which was presented to the Prime Minister on 17 November 2006 and was tabled in Parliament on 30 November 2006 has twelve chapters. Chapter I is introductory. Chapter II talks of Public Perceptions and Perspectives gathered by the Committee during its widespread interaction with the people and their representatives while it visited 13 most Muslim populous states and organized 5 Round Table Conferences in Delhi. Chapter III deals with the population size, distribution and health conditions of Muslims etc. In the subsequent chapters the Committee has analyzed the educational condition of Muslims, their economy and employment, their access to bank credits, their access to social and physical infrastructure, their poverty level and standard of living, their participation in government employment and programmes and empirical situation of Muslim OBCs. There is a separate chapter of Wakfs talking about economic potential of Wakf assets, constraints regarding the fulfillment of Wakf objectives and suggestions for overcoming such constraints. In the last chapter the Committee has given its recommendations.

3. The Committee noted that the public opinion in India was divided on reservation. Some argued that policies that promote equality must aim at a substantive equal outcome, not merely formal equal or identical treatment. Reservations or a separate quota for Muslims in employment and educational institutions was viewed as a means to achieve this. Others felt that reservations could become a thorny issue and have negative repercussions. Still others argued that good educational facilities combined with non-discriminatory practices are adequate for Muslims to compete. Those who argued for reservation policies often differed on who should be their beneficiary. Some argued that this facility should only be available to ‘dalit’ Muslims, while others suggested that the entire Community should benefit from it. For some an economic criterion was an ideal basis for reservations. They felt that this would fail to address the problem arising out of social discrimination. There were voices that questioned the non-availability of the Schedule Caste quota for Muslims while it was available to the followers of three religions.

4. A large cross section of the people was of the conviction that political participation and representation in governance structures are essential to achieve equity. Many alleged that participation is denied to Muslims through a variety of mechanisms. While it was pointed out that many names of Muslims were missing in the voter lists of a number of states, the Committee’s attention was also drawn to the issue of Muslim concentration constituencies of Assemblies and Parliament declared as reserved for Schedule Caste persons while constituencies with very low Muslim population but high SC concentration remain unreserved. Hence, it was argued that Muslims are being systematically denied political participation. The Committee collected data from all over the country in the light of which the second allegation regarding reservation of constituencies was found to be correct. For the first allegation the Committee did not collect any data.

5. In the field of literacy the Committee found that the rate among Muslims was far below the national average. The gap between Muslims and the general average is greater in urban areas and women. 25 per cent of Muslim children in the 6-14 year age group have either never attended school or have dropped out. Expansion of educational opportunities since Independence has not led to a convergence of attainment levels between Muslims and all others. Drop out rates among Muslims are higher at the level of primary, middle and higher secondary. The Committee observed that since artisanship is a dominant activity among Muslims technical training should be provided to even those who may not have completed schooling. The disparity in graduation attainment rates is widening since 1970s between Muslims and all other categories in both urban and rural areas. In premier colleges only one out of 25 under-graduate students and one out of 50 post-graduate students is a Muslim. Unemployment rate among Muslim graduates is the highest among all socio-religious communities. Only 3% of Muslim children among the school going age go to Madarsas. There is dearth of facilities for teaching Urdu. Lower enrolment in Urdu medium schools is due to limited availability of such schools at the elementary level.

6. The Committee found that Muslim parents are not averse to mainstream education or to send their children to affordable Government schools. But the access to government schools for Muslim children is limited. There is non-availability of schools within easy reach for girls at lower levels. Absence of girls hostels and female teachers are also impeding factors. The changes in the educational patterns across the various religious groups and communities suggests that the schedule castes and schedule tribes have definitely reaped the advantages of targeted government and private action supporting their educational progress. This reflects the importance of affirmative action. The sharper focus on school education combined with more opportunities in higher education for Muslims seems desirable. Moreover, skill development initiatives for those who have not completed school education may also be particularly relevant for some sections of Muslims given their occupational structure.

7. Bidi workers, tailors and mechanics need to be provided with social safety nets and social security. The participation of Muslims in the professional and managerial cadre is low. Muslim regular workers are the most vulnerable with no written contract and social security benefits. Muslim regular workers get lower daily earnings in both public and private jobs compared to other socio-religious communities. Since a large number of Muslim workers are engaged in self-employment, skill development and credit related initiatives need to be tailored for such groups.

8. The average amount of bank loan disbursed to the Muslims is 2/3 of the amount disbursed to other minorities. In some cases it is half. The Reserve Bank of India’s efforts to extend banking and credit facilities under the Prime Minister’s 15-point programme of 1983 has mainly benefited other minorities marginalizing Muslims. Muslim community is not averse to banking and more improvements can be brought about with specific measures. Inadequate targeting and geographical planning has resulted in a failure to address the economic problems of Muslims in rural areas. Some banks have identified a number of Muslim concentration areas as negative geographical zones where bank credit and other facilities are not easily provided. Steps should be introduced to specifically direct credit to Muslims, create awareness of various credit schemes and bring transparency in reporting of information.

9. There is a clear and significant inverse association between the proportion of the Muslim population and the availability of educational infrastructure in small villages. Muslim concentration villages are not well served with pucca approach roads and local bus stops. The concentration of Muslims in states lacking infrastructural facilities implies that a large proportion of the community is without access to basic services. In both urban and rural areas, the proportion of Muslim households living in pucca houses is lower than the total population. Compared to the Muslim majority areas, the areas inhabiting fewer Muslims had better roads, sewage and drainage and water supply facilities.

10. Substantially larger proportion of the Muslim households in urban areas are in the less than Rs.500 expenditure bracket.

11. The presence of Muslims has been found to be only 3% in the IAS, 1.8% in the IFS and 4% in the IPS. The share of Muslims in employment in various departments is abysmally low at all levels. Muslim community has a representation of only 4.5% in Indian Railways while 98.7% of them are positioned at lower levels. Representation of Muslims is very low in the Universities and in Banks. In no state does the representation of Muslims in the government departments match their population share. Their share in police constables is only 6%, in health 4.4%, in transport 6.5%. There is need to ensure a significant presence of Muslims especially in those departments that have mass contact on a day to day basis or are involved in sensitive tasks. Targeted programmes are required to be put in place. The coverage of Muslims in ICDS programme is poor in most states. For the Maulana Azad Education Foundation to be effective the corpus fund needs to be increased to 1000 crores. Total allocation in the four years 2002 to 2006 for Madarsa Modernization Scheme is 106 crores. The information regarding the Scheme has not adequately percolated down. Even if the share of Muslims in elected bodies is low they and other under represented segments can be involved in the decision making process through innovative mechanisms.

12. The Presidential Order of 1950 is inconsistent with Article 14, 15, 16 and 25 of the Constitution that guarantee equality of opportunity, freedom of conscience and protect the citizens from discrimination by the State on grounds of religion, caste or creed.

Most of the variables indicate that Muslim-OBCs are significantly deprived in comparison to Hindu-OBCs. The work participation rate (WPR) shows the presence of a sharp difference between Hindu-OBCs (67%) and the Muslims. The share of Muslim-OBCs in government/ PSU jobs is much lower than Hindu-OBCs. Out of every hundred workers about eleven are Hindu-OBCs, only three are Muslim-Gen and one is a Muslim-OBC. The monthly Per Capita Expenditure of Muslims is much lower than the national average. Benefits of entitlements meant for the backward classes are yet to reach Muslim OBCs. The condition of Muslims in general is also lower than the Hindu-OBCs who have the benefit of reservations.

13. There are about 5 lakh registered Wakfs with 6 lakh acre land and Rs 6,000 crore book value. But the gross income from all these properties is only 163 crores i.e. 2.7%. The management of Wakf Boards is unsatisfactorily due to inadequate empowerment of the State Wakf Boards and Centreal Wakf Council. Encroachment of Wakf properties by the State is a common practice. The attitude of the State Governments and their agencies has resulted in large scale abrogation of the cherished objectives of the Wakfs. Fresh institutional support is essential. A number of Wakf properties have been acquired although compensation was not paid. High legislative, administrative and judicial priority should be accorded to Wakf matters in order to improve the management of about five lakh properties across India. The Chairman and Members of the State Wakf Boards can be selected from a list of eminent persons in each state. The Government should create a new cadre of officers with knowledge of Islamic law to deal with the specific affairs of the Wakfs efficiently. A National Wakf Development Corporation and State Corporations should be established. The lease period of Wakf properties may be increased up to 30 years where the property is used for education, health care and other purposes consistent with the objects of the Wakf provided the lessee is a registered society or a registered trust doing charity work. Wakf properties should be exempted from Rent Control Act and Land Acquisition Act. Wakf Tribunal should be manned by full time presiding officers appointed exclusively for Wakf purposes. The Public Premises Eviction Act should be applied to remove encroachments from Wakf properties. Failure on the part of the state and statutory bodies entrusted with safeguarding Wakf properties has caused disquiet in the Muslim community.

Recommendations

14. The Muslim community exhibits deficits and deprivation in practically all dimensions of development. Mechanisms to ensure equity and equality of opportunity to bring about inclusion should be such that diversity is achieved and at the same time the perception of discrimination is eliminated. Creation of a National Data Bank (NDB) where all relevant data for various Socio Religious Communities are maintained has been recommended along with an autonomous Assessment and Monitoring Authority to evaluate the extent of development benefits which accrue to different Socio Religious Communities through various programmes. An Equal Opportunity Commission should be constituted to look into the grievances of the deprived groups. A carefully conceived nomination procedure should be worked out to increase inclusiveness in governance. The Committee has recommended elimination of the anomalies with respect to reserved constituencies under the delimitation scheme. The idea of providing certain incentives to a diversity index should be explored. Incentives can be related to this index so as to ensure equal opportunities to all socio religious communities in the fields of education, governance, private employment and housing. State functionaries should be sensitive to the need to have diversity and the problems associated with social exclusion. A process of evaluating the content of the school textbooks needs to be initiated and institutionalized. The UGC should evolve a system where part of the allocation to colleges and universities is linked to the diversity in the student population. To facilitate admissions to the most backward amongst all the socio religious communities in the regular universities and autonomous colleges, alternate admission criteria need to be evolved. Providing hostel facilities at reasonable costs for students from minorities must be taken up on a priority basis. Teacher training should be compulsory ensuring in its curriculum the components which introduce the importance of diversity and plurality. The teachers should be sensitized towards the needs and aspirations of Muslims and other marginalized communities. The states should run Urdu medium schools. Work out mechanisms whereby Madarsas can be linked with a higher secondary school board so that students wanting to shift to a regular mainstream education can do so after having passed from a Madarsa. Recognition of the Madarsa degrees for eligibility in competitive examinations is desirable. The Committee recommended promoting and enhancing access to Muslims in Priority Sector Bank Advances. The real need is of policy initiatives that improve the participation and share of the Minorities, particularly Muslims in the business of regular commercial banks. The community should be represented on interview panels and Boards. The underprivileged should be helped to utilize new opportunities in its high growth phase through skill development and education. Provide financial and other support to initiatives built around occupations where Muslims are concentrated and have growth potential.

Read Sachar Committee Report on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India

How They Crush Mangalore's Muslims

An independent citizens’ fact-finding team discovers that attacks on Muslims in coastal Karnataka routinely go unreported. And now, police atrocities are also being overlooked. These are excerpts from the team’s report

Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy was unrepentant about the state police’s style of violence-management in Mangalore, when he defiantly said, “Were they to dream of such violence?” In coastal Karnataka, the police could most certainly have foreseen communal violence if they had just been alert on duty. That wasn’t the problem. In fact, during the violence in Mangalore, the police were either lost in daydreams in the face of daylight looting and atrocities, or were inflicting nightmares on unsuspecting Muslims in the middle of the night.

The Press has always suppressed the fact of violence against Muslims throughout the coastal belt: but, this time around, they suppressed police atrocities too; the non-bjp parties too have maintained complete silence. This is a new development in the bloody history of coastal Karnataka’s communal violence. The administration, the police, and the media had never before worked unanimously and in tandem.

From what we saw in the violence-affected areas, wherever the Muslims had taken to destruction, it was as a response to the violence inflicted on them.

AT BAJPE
The Mangalore violence during the first week of October 2006 erupted in Bajpe, on the outskirts of the city. On October 3, a Sharada procession was scheduled and was to pass the Bajpe Masjid. Some Muslims told police about their objections to one tableau. The police and bjp mla Krishna Palemar, who was there, requested the organisers to remove that particular tableau. But the request went unheeded. Nor did they oblige to an altered request that the tableau should not pass in front of the masjid. Therefore, police stopped the procession. The organisers chose to place the Sharada idol in the middle of the road, in defiance.

What was this tableau all about? It was claimed that it was the tableau of Bappa Beary worshipping Sharada Matha, and that there wasn’t anything here that would insult Muslims. The popular legend, that was invoked, has it that Goddess Durga Parameshwari gave darshan to Beary, a rich Muslim merchant, in his dream. Legend has it that he erected a temple for her. There is also a popular Yakshagana narrative based on this legend. These days, the narrative presents Bappa Beary as a clown and the Bajpe tableau had a similar visual. The Muslim contention was that the man in the tableau portrayed a pitiable maulvi rather than Beary. However, the Muslims did not pick up a quarrel.

As the unchanged procession was allowed to proceed, seven Muslim and two Hindu shops were looted by a 1,000-strong mob. Mohammed Hanif of Top Collections incurred the highest losses: his Ramzan collection worth Rs 15 lakh was looted. Even as the looting was on, there were at least 200 policemen including the sp and the dcp stationed there. The next morning, the newspapers reported that the Muslims had objected to a symbol of communal amity and had stalled the procession!

AT ULLAL
Unlike Bajpe where the police were silent, they turned into beasts in Ullal on the outskirts of Mangalore. In the afternoon of the bandh called by Sri Rama Sene on October 6, three Hindu shops on the road to Ullal were set on fire. As there was stoning and rioting in two areas nearby, the police took it to be the handiwork of Ullal’s Muslims. They covered their faces and broke into Muslim houses when most men were away at the masjid.. They robbed these people and beat up women and children. Nearly 70 Muslims of Ullal — most of them boys — were arrested and shifted to Mangalore, and two days later they were charged with criminal cases and moved to Bellary jail.

AT BUNDER
Bunder is a “Muslim area” with a substantial number of Hindus. But it is considered a communally sensitive area, for reasons of planted prejudice. On the midnight of October 8, police broke into Muslim houses, mouthed obscenities against Bearies, and arrested the men. There were communal disturbances in Bunder earlier, but the police hadn’t broken into Muslim houses like this time. More importantly, Bunder was completely calm. The Muslims we met asked us: “With three continuous days of curfew, where would our children run? Would they be asleep at home if they were involved in rioting elsewhere?” The one solace, if it is one, was that the police here didn’t loot, as in Ullal.

AT GOODINA BALI
On October 13, there were four mild explosions near the BC Road Bus Stand that slightly damaged shop windows. Two people were stabbed. Next morning, the coastal press reported it as if it were a terrorist plot. Soon, the police swung into action and broke into Muslim houses at the nearby Goodina Bali and arrested 20 men, most of whom were either beedi-rollers or coolies.

The same police had slept when, on October 5, the Bajrang Dal had forced a bandh in the district. In broad daylight, 11 Muslim shops were looted and that too barely 100 metres from the police station. This loot and destruction was designated a “communal riot,” by the media.

Soon after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, Muslim houses and shops were looted in several places of coastal Karnataka. Since then, there has been a systematic Hindutva brigade-led attack on Muslims — in Puttur (1997), Suratkal (1998-9), Kundapur (2002), Adi Udupi (2005) — and Protestant Christians. It is now routine for the Hindutva brigade to co-opt the media, raise an alarm that Hinduism is in danger, and then attack Muslims with redoubled bestiality.

AT FAISAL NAGARA-VEERANAGARA
Veeranagara and Faisal Nagara are two settlements on Mangalore’s outer edge on the bank of Nethravathi river. This stretch was formerly called Kodange. In Faisal Nagara, Muslims are a majority with a substantial number of Hindu households while in Veeranagara, Hindus are a majority.

On October 6, Muslim youths stoned some Hindu houses at Faisal Nagara. The mob broke into four Hindu houses and damaged them. In one house, a middle-aged man and his son were beaten up. We visited the house, but couldn’t see any symptoms of systematic destruction. The same evening, the police forcibly shifted 30 Hindu families of Faisal Nagara to a camp in adjacent Veeranagara. While doing so, they told people that they could stay at their own risk.

Nearly 150 people have returned to their homes after staying three days in the camp. All of them we spoke to categorically said that they would not have gone but for police pressure, and that they perceived no threat.

Though this shifting of Hindus to Veeranagara was due to police irresponsibility, it gave the media a golden chance to fan communal hatred as it showed “the terrified Hindus” at the Veeranagara camp.

At Veeranagara, a shop that belonged to Abdul Khader (of Faisal Nagara), was attacked. Khader lodged a police complaint, naming some looters but none were arrested. Instead, his second son Pervez was arrested and taken to Bellary jail. When Fathima, wife of Khader’s first son, questioned the police, a policeman tried to molest her.

TWO INCIDENTS, TWO POSSIBILITIES
Hasanabba belongs to Maanur village of Bantwal Taluk. Of the nearly 20 households here, five belong to Muslims. A well-to-do beedi contractor, Hasanabba has employed nearly 120 people and all of them are non-Muslim women. He had earned the villagers’ respect by getting the local youth employment as well. But that didn’t matter on October 6 when 20 youth marched into Hasanabba’s house. As soon as he opened the door, he was struck on the head by a stone.

Sensing danger, he immediately closed the door.

Hasanabba called his friend and lawyer Ramesh Upadhyaya, a bjp man. As soon as Upadhyaya came to the spot, the mob fled. Next day, the village elders expressed their sympathies to Hasanabba. He pleaded with them, “These boys are your children. Please take them to the village temple, let them promise to your God that they won’t repeat this in future.” None of the elders responded. Unwillingly Hasanabba lodged a police complaint and named the culprits. But they still continue to be at large.

We saw a ray of hope at Perlagudde at Veeranagara. At the entrance here, there is only one Muslim household, surrounded by dalit households. Khalid lives here with his two elder sisters. On October 6, when he was returning from the masjid, three sword-wielding men stabbed him. When we met Khalid at the hospital, he named those who attacked him. Next day a group surrounded his house, stoned it and were about to set fire. Then, 70-year-old Kalyani and other neighbours — all dalits — scared the group away.

At the courtyard of Khalid’s house, this is what Kalyani told us, “They have done no wrong to anyone. If someone says we will set fire to his house, how can we sit quiet?"

Source: Tehelka.Com

Malegaon: more lies of the Anti-Terrorism Squad exposed

Pholsawngi's hundreds of Muslim and Hindu villagers stood up to vouch for Imam of Mosque, Maulana Mohammad Zahid's innocence from the allegations to fix bomb in Mushawarat Chowk of Malegaon

By Abdul Haleem Siddiqui

Yavatmal, Dec 12: The conspiracy to implicate Muslim youth in Malegaon blasts case was unveiled when three hundreds worshipers of Pholsawangi village's mosque witnessed that "Maulana Zahid sahab was not only present among with us on 8th September but he also led all prayers up to the night of "Shab-e Bara'at". Morevoer, these 300 worshipers of the Pholsawangi Jama Masjid signed the affidavit of Kul Jamaati Tanzeem Malegaon (All Jamaat Malegaon Organisatin). The affidavit's copy was received at Urdu Times office today. The signature campaign by Pholsawangi's villagers came after Police alleged that Maulana Zahid is the person who fixed the bomb in the motorcycle on Friday, 8 September, at Mushawarat Junction in Malegaon. Maharshtra DGP Pasricha confirmed this police claim at his press conference at Mumbai on 27th October where he had said that "Noorul Huda and Raees Ahmad planted the bombs at two places in the graveyard, while the Mushwarat Junction's bomb was fixed by Mohammad Zahid Abdul Majid." Eight thousand villagers of Pholsawngi expressed their utter surprise at the statement of DGP Pasricha. The villagers said that they have "never found him anywhere anytime other than in the Masjid. How can he take part in such a dangerous act". Police allegation is not convincing as the distance between Pholsawngi to Malegaon is 520 kms and the journey between the two towns can only be covered in 12 to 14 hours by car/bus.

Maulana Zahid's 20-year-old wife Salma lives 6 kms away from Pusad (Dist. Yavatmal ). She filed an affidavit with the Pusad magistrate that Maulana was present in Pholsawangi on 8th September. She wrote in the affidavit that "we were married 14 months back. I was residing with him in the room of Mosque-cum-madarasa compound at ward no. 5. He never went outside the village. He didn't take a single pie dowry at the time of marriage and even marriage ceremony was held simply. And my husband's relatives didn't participate in the marriage because he didn't invite anybody."

Salma not only failed to manage an advocate to fight this case due to poverty but she also could not travel to Mumbai to meet him after his arrest. Salma mentioned her penury and all details in her letter to Ulama and advocates of Kul Jamaati Malegaon Tanzeem (KJMT). At her appeal, KJMT sent a fact-finding team to this village to probe the case. The team comprised of Ulama, journalists and advocates. Today, this team announced the report and said that it has collected proofs of Maulana Zahid's innocence. The report includes affidavits of various important personalities which will be presented to the court if needed. the fact-finding team's members, Advocate Nihal and Advocate Momin Mujeeb said that a number of Hindu villagers too are witnesses of Maulana Zahid's presence in the Pholsawangi village on the blast day. The whole village considers him like an angel, they said.

Source: Urdu Times Daily, Mumbai, 13 December, 2006
Translated Urdu by Anwarulhaq Baig

A job to do: Indian Muslims and govt policies

By M.J. Akbar

Hoax is one of the more cruel four-letter words in the English language. What happens when you double it? You get government — and Parliament — policy towards Indian Muslims.

On Thursday the Lok Sabha approved a bill providing a 27% reservation for "Other Backward Classes" in Central educational institutions by a voice vote, which means that there was such unanimity that there was no need for a vote. These benefits have no economic conditionality: the rich among these castes will be the ones who will of course benefit far more than the poor.

The government, and Parliament, did not need a special commission, and a report with 404 pages of statistics, charts and comments, to tell them to do this. They just went ahead and did it.

Other Indian communities get jobs on command. Indian Muslims get commissions. The Rajinder Sachar Committee, appointed soon after Dr Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister, is the latest one.

The communities who benefit from job and educational reservations are better off than Muslims, financially, socially and psychologically. There are no riots against Other Backward Classes, for instance, that are aimed at terrorising the community and destroying entrepreneurs who may have set up a means of survival.

The Sachar Committee has done a good job of exposing implicit and explicit discrimination. But this has been said by other commissions before. My question is to others: does the political class really need another commission to tell them the facts? Don't ministers and MPs see the truth on a million faces when they go to beg and plead for Muslim votes?

Muslims have a special claim on the government led by Dr Manmohan Singh. Whatever the statistics might say, and I don't think they will say anything particularly different, Muslims believe that it was their focused energy, and their anger against the Gujarat riots that helped create a decisive swing of thirty to forty seats and brought the present dispensation into power. Their expectations from Dr Manmohan Singh are therefore higher. So far all they have got from this government is the usual dollop of rhetoric, and there isn't much time left. There is a suspicion that after the Uttar Pradesh elections, even this rhetoric might die its usual death. The tensions within the Congress when Dr Singh suggested that Muslims needed the first right on resources were visible to everyone. The Prime Minister was forced into a fudge, tempting one wag to suggest that he lost the Hindu vote on the first day and the Muslim vote on the second.

The Prime Minister has a problem with the history of paper-secularism in his own party: the Congress takes Muslims for granted. Since Muslims will vote against the principal anti-Congress party, the BJP, in any case, what option do they have at the ballot box? So all you need is to sprinkle some sincere-sounding phrases in their way, and string together pious intentions in a garland of fifteen points. There will always be a convenient excuse to postpone anything specific and substantive.

A fiction, that Muslims are also beneficiaries of the reservations regime, is the veil that protects the face of paper-secularism. Articles 340, 341 and 342 of the Constitution deal with "backward classes", Scheduled Castes and Tribes. According to the Constitutional (Scheduled Caste) Order of 1950, a convert to Islam or Christianity from the Scheduled Castes, the poorest of the poor, cannot claim any of the privileges of reservation. In 1956, this was amended to include Scheduled Caste converts to Sikhism within reservation quotas, and in 1990 this facility was extended to Buddhists. No one has explained why Muslims and Christians are still excluded, and of course no one talks about it either. Silence is so helpful when there is a conspiracy of injustice.

Muslim converts from the better-off "OBCs" are, in principle, entitled to reservation benefits. But no one ever mentions how many Muslims have actually got jobs against these reservations, because facts will reveal another hoax. The answer is: minimal. Take state government jobs. The facts are shocking. West Bengal, by any measure a state with a progressive government, has a Muslim population of 25.2%, next only to Assam, with 30.9%. But only 2.1% of state government employees are Muslims. Delhi, which has secular governments on both tiers, regional and national, has 3.2% Muslims in government jobs despite an 11.7% Muslim population. Kerala has the best numbers: 10.4% jobs for 24.7% of the population, but only because the provincial Muslim League has made effective use of its partnership in power. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have 18.5% and 16.5% Muslims, but only 5.1% and 7.6% Muslims in state jobs.

There is as much economic inequality among Muslims as in any other Indian community, but Islam has no place for caste. There is no one who is backward or forward in a mosque; everyone is equal. Past caste distinctions therefore have got blurred. Moreover, many of the traditional crafts that defined the "backward" status, as for instance the jobs of weavers or julahas, have been made obsolete by the progress of modern technology. These people have moved to urban areas and are labourers in a non-traditional environment. Third, Muslims do not retain caste appellations like "Yadav", which they may have had before conversion, and so proof of their "caste status" is difficult if not impossible to find. Only Kerala has done something to ameliorate the problem by setting aside a guaranteed 10% to 12% quota for Muslims within the OBC category. The other states make no such provision.

Hence, as the Sachar Committee reports, "Muslim OBCs are significantly poorer than Hindu OBCs" and "land holdings of Muslim OBCs is almost one-third of that of Hindu OBCs".

The most revealing statistics are written on the faces of impoverished Muslims eking out a marginal existence in the bylanes of Kolkata, the slums of Mumbai, the illegal sprawls of Delhi and thousands of villages of Bengal, Bihar, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

Will reserving seats for Muslims as a category help? The instant answer is yes: if this is the way the political game is being played, then why should Muslims and Christians be excluded from the game? Almost everyone else has been allotted a piece of the cake, so why not them? Are they paying the price for being "foreign faiths", that is, religions that originated outside the Indian subcontinent? If that is the truth, then the establishment should change the truth before the people change the establishment. If that is not the truth, then someone should let us know what the truth is.

The reality is that there isn't much of a cake left. The major growth of jobs is now in the private sector, not the public sector, which is excellent news for the country. To seek reservations in the private sector, as some backward militants insist on doing, would become a negative burden on growth. In a democracy, economics must occasionally pay a price to politics, but that would be a price too high. There have to be other means through which we can straighten the imbalance of decades.

Economic empowerment through credit to entrepreneurs is definitely more effective than a squabble over clerical jobs. Urban Indian Muslims have organised their economy into small businesses; this is one of the fortunate unintended byproducts of job discrimination. But the key to the future lies in education, and, more specifically, English education. Urdu is a beautiful language, but it is not a language in which jobs can be found anymore. Instead of creating Urdu universities from the budget allotted to Muslims, we need institutions that can make the young professionals in contemporary sciences like management, IT and media.

Where four-letter words are concerned, jobs is such an improvement on hoax.

http://www.asianage.com/
17 December 2006
MJ Akbar is chief editor of the Asian Age.

Ethnic Cleansing and Israel's Racist Discourse

By Ramzy Baroud

The Milli Gazette

"The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. At one end of the spectrum, it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population transfer, while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide."

According to this definition, and others including those emerging in the
1990s, following the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, Palestinians have been and remain victims of a determined and unwavering ethnic cleansing policy that began in 1947-48 and continues until today.

However, it is important that when we examine the subject of ethnic cleansing in Palestine, we take into account its various dimensions, one of which is the accompanying racist discourse, which has become part and parcel of Israel's ethnic cleansing policies.

Any act of collective punishment - whether ethnic cleansing or genocide or any other - is often preceded and or adjoined by a racist discourse that dehumanizes the victim and justifies the crime on baseless grounds, a concoction of lies and fibs that may appeal to national or religious psyches, but fails the test of law, morality or basic human norms and expectations.

Without such discourse, which depicted the original inhabitants of Palestine as cancerous, subhuman and a nuisance in the face of civilization and progress - as defined by the founders of the Zionist movement - it would not have been possible to carry out a systematic campaign of murder and ethnic cleansing in 1947-48, which saw the killing of an estimated 13,000 Palestinians, the forcible eviction of 850,000 and the depopulation and subsequent destruction of nearly 500 villages and localities. Without such a racist discourse it would have been difficult, to say the least, to carry out scores of preempted massacres, including Deir Yassin, Tantoura, Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba', Haifa and so forth.

Were it not for a decided campaign of institutionalized racism that occurred on such a large scale and which is maintained until today, it would have been impossible and implausible to gun down scores of innocent people after lining them up against the crumbling wall of the old Tantura mosque in May of 1948, or to bulldoze the home of a crippled man in Jenin in April 2002 without giving his mother the chance to evacuate him. Or to describe as a "great success" the killing of 14 civilians, including children when a one-ton Israeli bomb slammed into their apartment building in the Zeitun neighborhood in Gaza in July 2002. Or the wanton murder of 19 people, most of them women and children of the same extended family in Beit Hanoun earlier this November. But according to Israeli officials, every other method has been tried, and failed. "With murderous, bloodthirsty terrorism that wants to wipe you off the map, you have to respond accordingly: Wipe it out," as Ben Caspit commented following the brutal massacre of Beit Hanoun.

But if what purely motivates Israel is the fear of its own annihilation, then, how can the Zionist state's morally flexible supporters explain Israel's continuous colonization of the West Bank and Jerusalem? According to a 2004 Foundation for Middle East Peace report, the total settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has neared 420,000: 220,000 settlers in the West Bank and 200,000 in East Jerusalem. Expectedly, the number stands at a much higher figure.

New settlements are being erected while existing settlements are ever-expanding. According to a recent report drafted by the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department, Israel approved tenders for 690 new settlement units in two major east Jerusalem settlements: Ma'aleh Adumim and Beit Illit. The housing units could accommodate up to 2,800 new Jewish settlers.

If the idea was indeed to shield Israel from Palestinian attacks, then why is 80 percent of the wall being built on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land? Why encircle the Palestinian population of the West Bank from east and west, and those of Qalqilia from all directions? Why do thousands of Palestinian schools kids have to stand for hours in front of their gated villages to acquire permission from an Israeli soldier to allow them access to their schools and back?

Ethnic cleansing is indeed back on the Israeli political agenda, as Avigdor Lieberman, an Israeli politician who has for long advocated the ethnic cleansing of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, was recently appointed as Israel's new deputy prime minister. One of his early ideas since the new post, aside from sending Palestinians packing, was the killing of the entire leadership of the elected Palestinian government. "They...have to disappear, to go to paradise, all of them, and there can't be any compromise," he told Israeli radio last week.

The unfortunate reality is that Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing, though it might have changed tactics and pace throughout the years, has never stopped and is now more active than it has been for decades. It's also clear that the adjacent racist discourse that made such a policy sustainable for six decades is also at work, making advocates of war crimes heroes in the eyes of most Israelis.

Moreover, amid unabashed American backing of such policies and almost total silence or helplessness of the international community, Israel knows that the success of its colonial project in the West Bank is dependent on the element of time.

What's even more disheartening is the fact that Palestinian infighting is distracting and wasting energies that should be put to work to provoke and sustain an international campaign against Israeli atrocities. Infighting over governments that have no sovereignty, the lacking of any national cohesion or consensus or a clear political program that unifies Palestinians at home and in diaspora around one political and national agenda, will certainly ensure the success of the Israeli program and further contribute to the racist discourse that sees Palestinians as incapable of taking on the task of leadership and self-determination.

-This article is based on a speech delivered by the author at a London conference entitled: "Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Methods and Consequences" and broadcast by Al-Jazeera television.

-Ramzy Baroud's latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press) is available at Amazon.com and in the United States from the University of Michigan Press.

Frontline troops are refused kit to fight Taliban

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph

British soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan have had dozens of urgent requests for operational equipment turned down on cost grounds, it can be revealed.

Demands by officers for attack weapons and vital tools, as well as night-vision equipment and thermal-imaging devices used to distinguish friend from foe, have all been refused by the Ministry of Defence.

The revelation has sparked accusations that Tony Blair has reneged on promises he made to British troops just four months ago, when he pledged that commanders would be supplied with whatever they needed to "get the job done".

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that all four of the Army's mine protected vehicles (MPVs), used to extract injured troops from minefields in Afghanistan, have broken down. Officers have also complained that the shortage of Chinook helicopters, first raised by senior officers last summer, was still a fundamental problem for commanders in Helmand province, where 4,500 British troops are fighting the Taliban.

During an interview on British Armed Forces Radio last October, the Prime Minister said: "If commanders on the ground want more equipment – armoured vehicles, for example, more helicopters – that will be provided. Whatever package they want, we will do."

Mr Blair went further in a newspaper article, stating: "[British forces] will get, I promise, whatever frontline commanders tell us they need to complete their job."

But MPs and senior officers accused the Prime Minister of betraying Britain's armed forces.

Liam Fox, the Tory shadow defence spokesman, said: "This shows every promise made by Tony Blair to our troops was utterly untrue. This is a complete betrayal by this Government of all of those who risk life and limb for this country's security. It will disgust the British people that Blair's spin so callously puts our frontline troops at risk." Just a week ago this newspaper disclosed that the first official report into the war in Afghanistan stated that commanders had insufficient troops and too few helicopters and that the mission was lacking political direction.

Commanders regard the MPV as one of the most vital pieces of equipment in Afghanistan, where more than 10 million mines lie primed after 20 years of war.

Since last June two servicemen have been killed in mine explosions and three have been seriously injured.

One source revealed that the farthest the MPVs have travelled outside Camp Bastion in Helmand was just one mile. Another officer said that troops from Estonia and Denmark who were working alongside the Royal Marines were better equipped and had more reliable armoured vehicles than did British troops.

The officer said: "Tony Blair promised the troops anything they needed. Well, we need four more MPVs and we haven't got them; we need more night-vision equipment; and we need more troops."

Another source described the situation in Afghanistan as "farcical". He said there were reports of specialist soldiers such as engineers and signallers being flown by helicopter to remote out-stations to perform a "two-hour job" and being stranded for a week because of the helicopter shortage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/21/narmy21.xml

Aljazeera: The Plot thickens

By Ramzy Baroud

The Milli Gazette

The launch of Aljazeera International on November 15, the English arm of Aljazeera Satellite Television was hardly an ordinary event.

It was another notable addition to the growing global efforts aimed at counterbalancing American-European domination over world media: deciding on what story is to be told and how, thus shaping public opinion, reinforcing Westerns policies, disseminating its own ideas and ideals, at the expense of the almost entirely neglected and utterly hapless audiences that neither relate nor wish to identify with such discourses.

It's still too early of course, to appraise, in any serious fashion, academic or otherwise, the performance of Aljazeera English, and whether it has lived up to its own ideals and the expectations of its projected audience. However, it must be said that the clash of discourses and the calls for a balanced media is hardly new. This topic is in dire need of urgent and continual discussion.

Clearly, the need for Aljazeera, and subsequently its English service, came from the realization that the presentation of events in Arab countries are far from fair in the mainstream media in the US and elsewhere in the West. Further, the public's opinion of these events is not only scarce, but bits and pieces that they may perceive are often tainted.

But, how much does the average person in the West know about the Middle East's key conflict, that between Israel and the Arabs, primarily the Palestinians? How much of that knowledge is molded by the media, and how much by personal discovery predicated on one's own objective reasoning?

Answers may differ, but it remains true that opinions formed regarding distant conflicts like that of the Middle East tend to be homogeneous in nature, and for the most part fail to deviate from the predominant media narrative espoused by the mainstream. Further, how much influence do states have on their media, being mindful that ideally the media should be completely divorced of the public sector, therefore being an independent and unbiased critic? While states cannot prevent events or guarantee absolute power for themselves, they've well learned of the value of the media and its ability to forge a favorable climate of public opinion that seems incidentally consistent with that of the state.

Public opinion is moulded in the western mainstream media by consistently pressing particular issues, while repressing others. For example, it is quite rare that a routine attack by Israeli forces on the civilian population in Palestine makes headline news, but a reaction to such an onslaught, such as a suicide bombing would be the leading story and priority for news outlets everywhere.

In doing so, public opinion is slowly conditioned to think that Palestinian lives are not as significant as Israeli lives, and that Palestinian attacks are far more frequent and brutal. And while these policies are certainly mandated by the upper echelons of any given media institution, they are effective in not only tainting the publics view of events on the ground, but the reporters who compile those facts as well.

Another obvious example is the Iraq war. The US media, and to a lesser degree the British media, though they might allow for a controlled debate regarding the methods and tactics used to win the war, seem in unison regarding the 'admirable' objectives of the war. The BBC hesitates little to use such assertions often infused by Tony Blair such as 'liberating' Iraq, bringing 'democracy' to the Iraqis, and so forth.

In Afghanistan, the picture is equally tainted and dishonest. How often do we hear of a meaningful debate about the true intention of the war on that poor, ruined country? Almost never. Commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, CNN, the BBC, plus numerous media outlets in the West dispatched their reporters to Kabul and various other Afghani towns to examine the situation in that country after years of violent Taleban 'resurgence' and collation 'reconstruction' efforts. They examined the plight of women, education, the health sector, security, drug trafficking, etc. Some of the reports were astounding, indeed. But such a selective examination was clearly a wholehearted embrace of the US government's claim that its war on Afghanistan was motivated by such noble objectives as freeing women from the grip of extremism, improving the plight of ordinary Afghanis etc. These objectives were only introduced when the original ones failed, such as the capturing of Osama bin Laden, one that the media had also touted in the early months of the war. It was conveniently dropped by the media, when it was dropped by the military and as an official priority by Western governments. Now, Western journalists freely and often courageously challenge the failure of the NATO led coalition in Afghanistan to improve the lives of the people as the situation there is worsening and drug trafficking, mostly from Afghanistan to Iran to Europe is at an all time high.

It is important to remember all of this, but equally important to truthfully examine the state of the Arab media, especially with the advent of Aljazeera English, regardless of how it wishes to define itself.

The many years of controlled Press in the Arab world has produced two equally alarming phenomena: one restrictive that champions the viewpoint of the authority, and another overtly impulsive that discounts the authority and offers itself as the only viable alternative. Will Aljazeera be that third voice that speaks truth to power, yet neither self-congratulating, nor reactionary? Is that even possible, considering how Aljazeera is itself funded and politically shielded? The debate is hardly meaningful if rashly examined.

It ought to be said however, that without a serious challenge to the prevailing media control mechanism, a reordering of media priorities and a re-examination of the relationship between the media and the state, it's most likely that media distortions will continue to afflict the collective imagination of entire societies, thus shaping their views of themselves, of the world around them, and therefore prejudicing the way they define their views and responsibilities towards global conflicts, whether in Palestine-Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.

Ramzy Baroud's latest book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is now available in the US from the University of Michigan Press and from Amazon.com.

Blaming Islam

Examining the Religion Building Enterprise

By Louay Safi
The Milli Gazette

Blaming Islam for the lack of democratic and scientific developments in Muslim countries is not a new idea but an old enterprise rooted in the nineteenth and twentieth century European Orientalism. The late Edward Said succeeded, in the 1980s, in unmasking Orientalist notions within Western academia and exposing its false pretense. In his seminal work, Orientalism, Said demonstrated that Orientalist views of Islam were used to justify the European colonial ambitions in the Muslim world. Said’s monumental work was pivotal for the eventual transformation of Middle Eastern studies in Europe and the United States, as it forced the academia to embrace more scholarly and objective methods when studying the Muslim world.

Specialists who were intent on presenting Islam and Muslims in a negative light were unhappy with the positive portrayal, as were those who previously considered their work to be objective. Many were particularly disturbed by the rise of authentic voices that presented Islam as a vibrant religion, whose followers share many of the values and concerns of the West. Led by Princeton University historian, Bernard Lewis, they attempted to refute Said’s work and defend Orientalism. But Said’s thesis was profound, and Orientalists never fully recovered.

The September 11th terrorist attacks on mainland United States gave a new momentum to the Orientalist spirit. Bernard Lewis once again led the effort to revive Orientalist notions with the publishing of his 2002 book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Using subtle arguments, he indeed placed the blame on Islam and Islamic traditions for the failure of Middle Eastern societies to develop and modernize like the West. Lewis’ book has since been followed by an avalanche of similar articles and publications, mostly by neoconservative journalists and pundits, who reinforce Lewis’ thesis and even blaming Islam for the rise of terrorism as well as the rising tension between the West and the Muslim world.

The blame game is led today by neoconservative pundits who often present Islam as the new villain to be confronted by American military power. They have consistently presented Muslims as incapable of democratic rule, and who espouse values that are antithetical to world peace and religious tolerance.

To ensure that their views are not challenged by the academic community, neoconservatives are working hard to undermine academic freedom by intimidating scholars that present a balanced view of the Middle East. Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, a diatribe against Middle East Studies in U.S. universities, and Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch, an organization devoted to smearing professors critical of U.S. foreign policy and Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians, are two such examples. This campaign is one that aims to intimidate free thinking on Middle East politics and silence voices that challenge their perspective.

Although many of the anti-Islam writers and neoconservative pundits play on the fear of the general public by publishing books for a general audience, others have been done for policymakers under the cover of respected institutions and think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the RAND Corporation. Readers should note that this activity began in 1992 when Defense Department staffers I. Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz drafted the “Defense Policy Guidance.” and was followed more discretely and in more depth in a report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” published in 2000 by the Project for the New American Century.

The neoconservative attitudes of, and approach to, Islam and the Middle East is well illustrated by a widely publicized report written by Cheryl Benard and published by the RAND Corporation in late 2003 under the title Civil and Democratic Islam. Like other neoconservatives, Bnard blames the rise of intolerance, anti-democratic tendencies, and terrorism on all Muslim individuals and groups that closely adhere to Islamic values and practices. RAND openly advocates “religion building” as the only way to counter terrorism and anti-Americanism.

Religion building is an invitation to world powers to reform Islam. It is a call for reinterpreting Islam and restructuring Muslim societies so as to counter the rise of militancy in Muslim societies. There is no contention over the need for reform, and the need for cultural and social reforms in Muslim societies and communities is well articulated by Muslim intellectuals long before Islam became the main focus of Western reporters and pundits. Indeed, reform has been underway for more than a century now, and Muslims have been engaged in an internal struggle to redefine modern Islamic societies in ways that aim at empowering civil society and ensuring democratic control.

The contention is rather over how reform is to be achieved, and who is more capable of leading the reform. The contention is over whether reform can or should be imposed by outsiders who have little understanding of Muslim societies and vague sense of the nuances of local cultures, and who call on world powers to use their political and military clout to impose sociopolitical design on Muslim societies and communities. A call for external intervention to restructure the Islamic faith and rebuild Muslim societies is faulty, and is guilty of misreading Islam and ignoring the sociopolitical reality that gives rise to global terrorism.

Religion building is perilous, complex, ill-conceived, and practically untenable. It is a distraction and a blatant attempt to avoid any serious evaluation of the responsibility of world powers for the radicalization of Muslim politics. The rise of radical Islam cannot be explained purely on the level of religious doctrine. Radicalization of Muslim politics is directly connected to the rise of authoritarian regimes in Muslim societies. Authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes that suppress open debate and silence opposition have long enjoyed the support of successive U.S. administrations.

On balance, Islam has been a positive force, rather than a villain to be arrested and chastised, in the development of the modern Middle East. The focus on radical groups perpetrating violence in the name of Islam prevents some analysts from appreciating the centrality of Islamic notions and values in the progress toward a more open society and vibrant culture. A full assessment that takes into account the impact of Islamic reform on Muslim society would illustrate that pessimism toward Islam, reflected in RANDS’s Civil Democratic Islam and similar documents, is unwarranted.

While urging support to one group and opposition to another, neoconservative pundits remain oblivious to the connection of the various ideological groups to the larger population in Muslim societies and to one another. The United States, as an external political actor that is increasingly perceived by Muslims as biased and uneven-handed, cannot positively affect political development by rendering support on the basis of artificial religious preferences. Rather, it must base its positions on intrinsic values and political principles. In actuality, Benard’s recommendations are nothing but a recycling of the very old foreign policies that got us where we are today and that have led to the radicalization of the Middle East.

The United States has tried in the past to put its weight behind Muslim secularists. The result has been the aggravation of the internal political balance and the radicalization of the societies where the U.S. took sides on the basis of superficial criteria and short-term interests. It was the very approach of siding with modernists against socialists and traditionalists that got the United States into trouble with the Iranians, the Lebanese, and, most recently, the Palestinians.

The report is conspicuously silent on the effects of U.S. foreign policy, which has been frequently characterized by Muslims as one of inconsistency and double standards – one that supports friendly dictators and corrupt, but useful, regimes in the Muslim world, while pushing for democratic reform in Eastern Europe; one that defends human rights in China, but ignores them in the Middle East; and one that protests Palestinian violence against Israel, but remains silent in the face of Israeli violence in Palestine. Indeed, the politicization of Islam and the rise of anti-Americanism are directly linked to the very efforts that aim at marginalizing Islam and forcing Western secularism on Muslim society.

RAND’s Civil Democratic Islam is a case in point and illustrates the tendency to treat Islam as an anomaly to be evaluated on the basis of different standards that the one used to evaluate Christianity, Judaism, and other world religions. The author of Civil Democratic Islam has surprisingly chosen religious identity rather than political values to distinguish foes from friends. While Civil Democratic Islam declares democracy and civil rights to be its ostensible goals, it surprisingly stresses religious doctrine and lifestyle to distinguish democratically oriented Muslims. Benard can hardly say the same thing about similar practices among Christians and Jews. The author would not use the same terms to describe Joe Lieberman, the U.S. senator from Connecticut, who is also a practicing orthodox Jew.


Containing radical groups and ensuring more friendly and cooperative relations with the Muslim world requires a drastic shift in policy and attitude. Rather than searching for “lifestyle” criteria to separate friends from foes, the United States’ position should be based on principles and values. The United States should support and cooperate with political forces in the Middle East that uphold the values of freedom, equality, and tolerance of ethnic and religious diversity, and should embrace those who display commitment to democracy and the rule of the law, regardless of their religion, religious doctrines, and their “lifestyle.”


Rather than using lifestyle and religious criteria to assign guilt, the U.S. government needs to extend its founding principles to followers of all religions, and ensure that it does not use different standards for dealing with different religions. The United States must be consistent in pursuing its support for democracy and human rights, and must ensure that the principles of right and justice that guide its relations with Europe also apply to its relations with Muslim societies.

American Muslims can be of great help in fighting terrorism and extremism, and in bridging the deepening divide between the United States and the Muslim world. American Muslims have deep understanding of both Muslim and American cultures, and are well-positioned to help reconcile Islam and the West. American Muslims have already made remarkable achievements at reconciling Islamic values with the founding principles of the United States, and have managed to develop good and important experiences as to how Islamic values can bear on modern living. They can be instrumental in sharing their experiences of aligning Islamic values and education with democratic institutions and practices with coreligionists in Muslim countries. But for that to happen in more effective ways, American Muslims need to be involved in policy making and implementation, rather than allowing themselves to be marginalized and chastised.

In addition to involving American Muslim leaders in consultation on policies relating to Islam, the Muslim world, and the war on terror, civil society and government organizations should: (1) engage Muslim leaders who represent social and political groups that are committed to democracy, instead of relying completely or exclusively on the views of experts who do not have firsthand contact or experience with Muslim groups; (2) ensure that U.S. foreign policy is always respectful of democratic principles and values, the rule of law, and protection of human rights; (3) apply the same set of principles and values to all people, regardless of their religious and ethnic affiliation; (4) withdraw support from authoritarian regimes, and send a clear message by requiring an open political system and free and fair elections as a precondition for economic cooperation; (5) have a clear position regarding Islam, and avoid sending mixed messages to Muslim communities and societies.

*This article is a condensed summary of a more elaborate paper on the question. For full version of the arguments, please refer to Dr. Safi’s paper at http://lsinsight.org/articles/Current/ReligionBuilding.htm

Dr. Louay M. Safi serves as the executive director of ISNA Leadership Development Center, an Indiana based organization dedicated to enhancing leadership awareness and skills among American Muslim leaders, and a founding board member of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. He writes and lectures on issues relating to Islam, American Muslims, democracy, human rights, leadership, and world peace. His commentaries are available at his Blog: http://blog.lsinsight.org

Palestinian girl dies of injuries

A 10-year-old Palestinian girl has died in hospital in Jerusalem, three days after being injured during an incident involving Israeli border police.

The child, Abir Aramin, was the daughter of a prominent Palestinian peace activist Bassam Aramin.

She came from the West Bank village of Anata where Israel is building a section of its West Bank barrier.

Palestinians say she was with two other girls in the village when an Israeli border police vehicle drove past.

Stones were thrown in the direction of the police, who responded with tear-gas and stun-grenades. The girl was hit in the head.

The border police have launched an investigation.

Regret

An Israeli border police spokeswoman said that they had used "crowd control means against stone throwers" protesting against the construction of Israel's controversial barrier.

"The border police expresses its regret over the death of the girl and hopes the circumstances of the incident are quickly revealed."

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has said that last year 660 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces. In the same period 23 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians.

Israel says the defensive system of concrete walls and wire fence is needed to stop suicide bombers. Palestinians say it is part of an Israeli land grab of West Bank territory.

Settlement freeze

Also on Friday, Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz ordered a freeze on the building of a new Jewish settlement of Meskiot in the West Bank, less than a month after saying it would go ahead.

A defence ministry official said Mr Peretz wanted to give the matter further consideration.

Last month's announcement that Israel would build its first new settlement in more than a decade prompted criticism from the Palestinians, the European Union and the United States.

The settlement was planned to house Israeli families who had moved from the Gaza Strip when settlers and troops left in 2005.

All settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, although Israel rejects this.

The 2003 Middle East roadmap calls for a complete halt to all settlement activity.
Source: BBC

Muslim blood is a cheap commodity

By Yvonne Ridley

The Milli Gazette
10 December 2006

The Arabic language is one of the cornerstones of Islam, as we have heard today from our brother, so I do apologise in advance that this is one of the many areas of Islam I’ve yet to master.

Islamically, I am very young, having reverted in 2003 – and while I have much to learn, I can identify with the frustrations shared by young Muslims today.

I know 9/11 had a huge impact on the world, but it wasn’t really the start of something … it was the continuation of a legacy of US imperialism and its fear of Islam.

Just over ten years ago, fit, young Muslims across the globe flooded into Bosnia to help their brothers and sisters fight for their survival against the Serbs who were carrying out a genocide sanctioned by the silence of a watching world.

The jihad brought together Muslims from all nationalities, states and cultures. All were united, even those who could not travel to fight helped in other ways, such as fund-raising, public awareness events and demonstrations.

The impact was to stop the genocide. Western intervention, when it happened, came only after it was apparent that the Bosnian Muslims were heading for victory. The establishment of an Islamic state deep in the heart of Europe was simply too much to bear and so the West intervened. This is not my conclusion, but US President Bill Clinton admitted it in his autobiography.

This fear of Islam has now evolved, in the last 10 years, to such an extent that the blood of our brothers and sisters is now flowing like rivers across Chechnya, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and we saw recently what happened to Lebanon.

I have walked through many of those killing fields and let me tell you the twisted, blown up limbs of our Muslim brothers and sisters look exactly like those pulled from the rubble of the Twin Towers.

Yet the message of today is quite clear. Muslim blood is a cheap commodity.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of innocent Muslims continue to be tortured in far away dungeons and cages in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Diego Garcia and ghost prisons throughout the world.

Others are tortured in Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria … even here, in Egypt … brothers are being tortured at the behest and request of the United States.

So what sort of message does that send out to our young people? They read about the heroic exploits of Saladin Ayyoubi, Khalid bin Walid, Tariq bin Ziad and listen intently to stories of courage and bravery about our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

Do you know, five years ago I had never even heard of The Prophet (pbuh), but now I would give my last drop of blood to protect his name, his honour and his memory. Even in death, he continued to show how strong he was by uniting the Ummah in protest at those vile cartoons from Denmark.
Our modern day heroes include those two 1960s martyrs, Malcolm X and Sayyid Qutb, whose writings have helped define me as a Muslim.

These are the sort of role models and influences our youth need to follow, but instead they receive confused and mixed messages.

One minute they are told to fear no one but Allah (swt) while the next minute they are told to dilute their Islam and keep their heads down.

Since the events of 9/11, there has been an unrelenting campaign launched to change Islam into something more palatable to Western society. The vision is a secular and cultural Islam at peace with the world through its submission to its oppressors rather than to Allah; an Islam devoid of jihad, shari’ah and khilafah – the very things we are commanded by Allah to implement in order to establish Allah’s deen on this earth.

And, it is in evidence everywhere I look. Hijabs are being ripped off the heads of my sisters in Tunisia, France and Turkey. Sisters in Holland and Germany are also in the firing line.
And in Britain, we have Jack Straw, the former British Foreign Secretary who questioned the veil – I am not having a white, middle-aged man telling me how to dress. Keep out of my wardrobe and that of every sister on this planet.

I pick up the newspapers in Cairo today to discover the Minister of Culture has called the wearing of the veil a regression.

How dare he say that? Why are the men in Egypt standing by and doing nothing to silence him? He is insulting the honour and dignity of every Muslim woman who chooses to cover.
Farooq Hosni is a disgrace to Islam – what sort of message does he send out to our young people with his weasel words?

The niqab, like the veil, like the hijab has become a symbol of a rejection of those negative Western lifestyles like drug-taking, binge-drinking and promiscuity. It is a statement telling the West we don’t want to be like you.

These Arabs who choose to be more western than Westerners make me laugh – do they realize how pathetic they look in the eyes of the rest of the world? This Minister should be sacked from his post for dishonouring every sister who chooses to cover.

I suppose he hides behind such descriptions as moderate – again what sort of message does that send to our young people?

If we ask them to be moderate, does that not suggest that there is something wrong with Islam that it needs to be toned down, diluted?

The last time I came to Cairo, I was called an extremist by none other than the Sheikh of Al Azhar … Sheikh Tantawi. The reason for this? Because, I would not shake his hand.
What is a moderate and what is an extremist? I really don’t know. I am a simple Muslim. I follow no scholars or sects … I merely follow The Prophet (pbuh) and the Sunnah. Does that make me an extremist?

I once said being a Muslim is a bit like being pregnant. You are or you are not. Whoever heard of anyone being moderately or extremely pregnant?

Islam has been under attack for 1400 years and we should have learned by now to put our trust in no one but Allah. Yet there are those who continue to kiss the hand which slaps them.
I am afraid that we can no longer put our trust into someone just because they might wear Islamic dress or have a long beard … I notice quite a few long beards in here today, but I am not referring to you, brothers.
There are those Muslim leaders who claim to guide and protect us but not all of them have our interests at heart.

Our young people are going to have to be very discerning since the events of 9/11, Bali, Madrid and the London bombings, to name a few.

There are individuals who, for years, rallied the masses to stand up for justice and support mujahideen groups around the world; and now some have become embarrassingly silent while others condemen armed jihad, portraying mujahideen as terrorists and extremists who follow a distorted version of Islam.
In some ways we are all to blame. Our greatest shame has been our silence while martyrdom operations in Palestine and other occupied lands have been condemned as acts of terror as witnessed in 9/11 and the July 7 bombings.

Our young people have to be taught that what is happening in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan is legitimate resistance against a brutal military occupation, while crimes like 9/11 and the London bombings are blatant terrorism.

Equating the two only betrays our brothers and sisters who have no other option but to fight, or face being wiped off the face of this planet.

The new slaves of the West criticize Islamist parties and governance by Shari’ah. Even student and youth movements, which consistently campaigned for Palestine and Iraq, have suddenly lost their tongues in a bid to be seen as "moderate".

In Britain, we have an invasion of what I call the Happy Clappies. They are being flown in by the Government from the US, Canada, Yemen and Mauritania to preach a diluted form of Islam. They are poisoning the minds of our youth and we should be very wary before the Happy Clappies spread across the world. They attack Wahhabi groups in the most cynical manner … some even misuse nasheeds, and I am deeply afraid that the Happy Clappies are infecting our nasheeds with the excesses of Western pop culture.

The end result of all this has been a dilution of the deen of Allah, a weak and pacified Islam willing to accept the status quo in which Muslims are oppressed and subjugated; an Islam in which Muslims are content to sing and dance the night away to nasheeds, to concentrate on bettering their life in the West and to condemn the actions of their brothers and sisters who courageously resist occupation and oppression with whatever they have.

Even making dua for them now has become a crime – how long before we are told not to even pray for the mujahideen?

One of the greatest military generals the world has known, Saladin Ayyubi, the liberator of al-Quds, was once asked why he didn’t smile. He answered back that how could he smile while knowing that Masjid al-Aqsa, remained under Crusader occupation. I wonder what he would make of the state of the world today? I wonder what advice he would give our youth?

This is a world where Arab leaders belly-danced shamelessly in front of America while handing Iraq over on a plate. The same Arab leaders look the other way as our beautiful Palestine is continually raped and sodomized, and that other great daughter of the Arab world, Lebanon … where was the Arab world when she was so brutally assaulted?

And the war drums are beating again. Not only is the whole world watching, but so are our children, our youth, our future. We must nurture them, and inspire them with tales of the Prophet and the Sahaba.

As long as the Ummah continues to throw up figures like Khalid bin al-Walid, Saladin Ayyoubi, Sayyid Qutb and Malcolm X, all is not lost. The more we are oppressed by the tyrants, the more we will fight back. That is the nature of Islam. And this is the Islam our youth need to follow, be guided by and inspired.

Farooq Hosni and his ilk are pale imitations of real men – they have castrated themselves in a pathetic attempt to become more Western than the Westerners. He will be consigned to the history books with barely a sentence, while the courage and heroic resistance of our brothers and sisters will go down in chapters.

A rapidly increasing number of Muslim youth are now realising that no matter how hard they compromise their deen to blend in with the wider society, when things go sour, they will be treated with suspicion.

The more we are told to forget Shari’ah, khilafah and jihad, the more Muslims will pay the blood price to uphold these values.

The jihad we are witnessing in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya is something noble, a just war against injustice and tyranny.

The actions of the jihadists pose absolutely no threat to the West or Western lifestyles, and their resistance is not only justified but embraced and encouraged by international law.

The real religious extremists who pose the greatest threat to radicalizing our youth are the Christian Fundamentalists in the White House and Downing Street. Bush and Blair have become al-Qaida’s finest recruiting officers.

More and more young Muslims are waking up with the realisation that it is not terrorism or extremism that is being targeted but Islam itself.

It is up to the Ummah to lead and inspire our youth, just as The Prophet led and inspired millions and continues to do so.

And the first lesson we must teach our youth is to fear none but Allah (swt).

Full text of the speech delivered by the celebrated British journalist in the World Assembly of Muslim Youth conference (WAMY), Cairo, 21 November 2006