Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Honour in citizens well being not in chauvinistic nationalism


Indo-Pak Relations :: Flawed notions of honour
Pakistan has no business to allow any wanted Indian national to take refuge on its soil. Such persons need to be put on the first available flight to India. How come those imprisoned in India and later exchanged as a result of an aircraft hijacking demand were allowed to roam around as free people in Pakistan?

By Naeem Sadiq                                December 17, 2008               Muslim India
Dawn/South Asia Citizens Web

NICOLAS Chauvin, a soldier in Napoleon’s army, may be dead and gone, but the chauvinist attitude named after him has not only survived, it has also been adopted as a popular pastime to be indulged in by politicians, military men, TV anchors, op-ed writers and religious obscurantists.

Not to be left behind, even supposedly rational scientists like Dr Samar Mubarakmand have joined the jingoistic ranks by calling on the government to show no flexibility in the face of India’s allegations, saying that after all it would take Pakistan only 10 minutes to fire the nuclear missiles.

It may be true that we now have the capability to fire our nuclear missiles in just 10 minutes. Our highest key performance indicator (KPI) for excellence seems to be the speed with which we can annihilate our enemy. Can we also rescue our citizens from a burning building in 10 minutes? Can we come to the rescue of a woman being raped within 10 minutes? Can we recover a child who has fallen into a manhole in 10 minutes? Can we take a sick person to hospital and give him treatment in 10 minutes? Can we stop the burying alive of helpless women in 10 minutes, or can we even register an FIR in 10 minutes? If we can do none of these, and can only annihilate our perceived enemies in 10 minutes, we have a perverted understanding of honour and need to revisit and revise our KPIs.

It is unsafe to have nuclear neighbours like India and Pakistan whose politicians, generals and bureaucrats have an obscurantist mindset, no better than that of feudal villagers who keep family enmities alive because of a conflict over a piece of land or a murder committed many generations ago. We have not been able to grow out of this ancient tribal concept of honour, ego, neechi naak and oonchi pagri. Our honour sleeps peacefully when the chief justice’s daughter’s marks are increased illegally. Our honour is not ruffled when we appoint jirga operators, vani dealers and supporters of women being buried alive as federal ministers. The examples on the other side of the border are no less in intensity or number.

The recent attacks in Mumbai were a great opportunity for Pakistan and India to come together. What if President Zardari had taken off for New Delhi instead of going all the way to Turkey to join neighbour Hamid Karzai for dinner? Why was the Joint Anti Terror Mechanism (JATM), already in place between the two countries, not immediately made to work? Here was a great opportunity for both countries to build mutual trust and clean up their respective backyards.

Pakistan has no business to allow any wanted Indian national to take refuge on its soil. Such persons need to be put on the first available flight to India. How come those imprisoned in India and later exchanged as a result of an aircraft hijacking demand were allowed to roam around as free people in Pakistan? Would Pakistan like India to protect someone who was a prisoner in a Pakistani jail? Such persons should either be sent back or made to stand trial in their own country. If Pakistan were to act in an open manner on these issues, it would also have strong reason to ask India to stop its covert support to militants in Pakistan.

It is time for Pakistan to act like a responsible state and take steps to dismantle the infrastructure operated by non-state militants on its soil. The world looks at all Pakistanis with suspicion, as if no Pakistani can consume his breakfast unless he has fired a few rounds from a rocket launcher. But this perception is not altogether unfounded. The fact is that there is hardly a day which does not see terrorist attacks killing dozens of innocent people in one or the other town or city of Pakistan. Pakistanis feel unsafe in their own country, and are least interested in seeing their neighbours annihilated.

Clearly the same would be the feelings of an average Indian. 60 years of militarisation has made the people of India and Pakistan more unsafe and more vulnerable. If one’s child is killed, it does not matter if the bullet has come from another country or from the barrel of the local terrorist. We have paid a heavy price for our capacity-building to kill others and doing little to protect our own citizens. The oxymoronic ‘arms for peace’ pursuit has made people of both countries poorer in every sense of the term.

From ancient Greece to the present day, notions of honour have had a critical impact on the causes and conduct of wars. It is dangerous for modern nations to cling on to feudal and fake concepts of honour. Ever so often, it pushes us to take refuge in chauvinistic nationalism. We need to revisit and give up this mediaeval sense of honour, even if it calls for serious psychiatric interventions for our leaders. Our honour lies in the well-being of our citizens and in building peace and security for them as well as for our neighbours. Most of all, our honour lies in being honourable people — those who do not tolerate corrupt rulers, PCO judges and militancy in all its forms.



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Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Gaza:A Bare Life Zone Nearing To A No-Life-Zone


PALESTINE:: With the latest Israeli maneuvers' of tightening the siege imposed on Gaza, more life necessities vanished. The key power plant shut down 25 days ago resulted in tremendous direful outcomes. More than 75% of the Gaza strip faces severe power cuts and some areas completely plunged into darkness.

By Sameh Akram habeeb                           16 December, 2008                       Muslim India 
Gaza Today

With the latest Israeli maneuvers' of tightening the siege imposed on Gaza, more life necessities vanished. The key power plant shut down 25 days ago resulted in tremendous direful outcomes. More than 75% of the Gaza strip faces severe power cuts and some areas completely plunged into darkness.

Power cuts and daily blackouts resulted in hindering of all facilities depending on power. The remaining power shares provided by Israel and Egypt are not enough to cover the whole coastal strip. Pumped fresh water is not reaching all living places, farms and central water wells. Sewage and treatment water machines are halted. Additionally around 77 million liters of sewage water leak into the Mediterranean contaminating it and damaging fish resources on daily basis.

According to Popular Committee against Siege PCAS, basic food stuff like milk, flour, food oils, meat, rice and legumes are not available with big quantities. Other needs are not available like raw materials needed to operate small food factories.

Estimates for daily consumption of the following food products in the Gaza Strip are: 867 tons of flour, 153 tons of sugar, 110 tons of rice, 75 tons of different kinds of oil and 49 tons herbs and vegetables. According to crossing administration only 15 % of Gaza needs get in.

A severe shortage of basic medicines is up to 40%. Medicines of diabetes, heart, asthma and other chronic diseases are vanished from Gaza. Additionally, other kind of medicines for Cancer, Lennar and liver failure face sharp shortages. Sterilization and Disinfection and medical equipments and clothes face decrease up to 30%. There is severe shortage in Solutions and pigments and laboratories tools. These shortages amounted of 40% directly affect patients. -Some Medical Machines are in bad need for spare parts and maintenance. Due to siege none of the needed is being achieved. Medical machines of Gas measurements of children incubators are being affected as well. The power cuts and continued blackouts damaged part of machines and its programming systems. Damage hit C.T and X.Ray Departments at al Shifa' and European hospitals. These are so crucial to diagnosis tumors of cancer and other diseases. Spare parts for medical T.V are not available!

It was a due on Israel to open commercial crossings completely during the calm. But, Israel didn't abide by that condition as she partially opened them. But within the last week; Israel totally closed them causing a huge humanitarian crisis. According to UNRWA, around 750,000 of its beneficiaries don't get their devoted share of food parcels. With the Israeli ban on UNRWA aid, it is ensuring that a dire humanitarian crisis will occur within days. As UNRWA is also under siege from assisting Palestine in humanitarian causes, long time projects such as housing are halted to the loss of $350 million.

Agricultural, Animal and Bird is one of most negatively affected by recent closure of collective punishment. Animals and birds are being sorted as terrorists as the same as Gazans in Israeli view. Gaza needs 150 tons of fodder a day, since 4 weeks none of it entered. More than a million of chickens executed due to lack of fodder. looses amounted of 20% due to lack of vaccinations, serums and lack of fodder. Fishing sector lacks natural gas needed for fishing and also the process of incubation is being halted. Agricultural tools like insecticides, seeds and fertilizer not available. This negatively affects the sector and already did with start of siege. Agricultural products are being held in Gaza as Israel prevents any kind of exportation since a year and a half.

The people of Gaza are outraged by the Israeli collective punishment. I spoke to some Gazan residents and I observed some differences amongst them. Mr. Muhammad who refuses to identity his full name said that this siege is unjust and it's a way to pressure on people to give up their rights.

"We have been patient for 60 years now. We passed more cruel time than this. Thus, why to give up this year. We have to be adamant and patient and the siege will be lifted eventually." Mr. Muhammad said.

I spoke to a jobless resident from Al Shati' refugee camp. Mr. Khalil Barakat, who is in his mid 50's, says he is outraged by this siege. "I'm fed up; bored I feel we are caged like animals in Gaza. If I could get a chance to immigrate to live my remaining years in peace, then I would love to." He said with anger.

Accidentally, I met old friend of mine, Um Muhammad Abu Ouf; a mother in her twenties. It was good for me to explore her views about the siege as well. As a Mother and a female, her perspective is most important. We met at 6 pm at AL Omar al Moktar Street which was plunging into deep darkness.

She had her outstanding comments about siege. I asked: How badly you are affected by siege?

"Well, the siege became a daily nightmare midday and night. Electricity cuts off and that frightens my 11-month infant. It makes conditions unsafe for him. Further, I'm trying to get some fortified food for him. I went to many stores and shops but in vain. I could not find any food nor needed supplies for my son as there is a shortage in a lot of the basic products needed to care for infants' such as milk, diapers and so forth".

One another pessimistic Gazan, Nahed Deeb, told me that a famine is looming up as no one is giving a helping hand for Palestinians." We are slowly dying and no one is taking actions. I lost my work 8 years ago and I'm dependant on irregular aids. This is applicable on tens and hundreds of thousands in the normal time. Nevertheless, no longer more poor like me are getting any kind of support.

Israeli defense Ministry announced today that Gaza crossings would remain closed until further notice. Gazans are to expect more mayhem as time advances. Palestinians aspire a ceasefire that leads for a complete lifting of Gaza siege imposed more than a year ago. Clearly, the aspirations of Palestinians would go with wend since there is no stability in the Israeli political arena. Every Israeli politician is promising and threatening Gaza of a brand-new way of torture.

Israelis prevented a Libyan boat loaded with 3 thousand tons of food stuff from arriving off the Gaza shore. The Israeli refusal came under a pretext that the boat carries weapons for Palestinians. Within two days a Qatari boat would set to sail from Cyprus to Gaza carrying more humanitarian aids. Additionally, Turkish, Kuwaiti, Yemani and Jordanian boats are planned to sail for Gaza soon.
Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Photojournalist & Peace Activist
Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb
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A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible


PALESTINE:: Palestinian–Israeli peace-making can only deliver if Palestinians are united, but the current Annapolis “peace process” was launched first of all as a blueprint for perpetuating the inter- Palestinian divide.

By Nicola Nasser                                   16 December, 2008                         Muslim India
Countercurrents.org

Palestinian – Israeli peace-making can only deliver if Palestinians are united, but the current Annapolis “peace process” was launched first of all as a blueprint for perpetuating the inter- Palestinian divide.

Commitment or non-commitment to what the Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russian mediators in Middle East peace – making described as the “Annapolis Process” in a statement they released after their meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on November 8 has become the terms of reference to make or break the Palestinian unity of ranks, which has so far failed the Egyptian mediation efforts, the latest in a series of national, Arab and non-Arab similar reconciliation endeavors.

The Annapolis conference, which was hosted by the United States in Meryland on November 27, 2007 and attended by all members of the League of Arab States, convened with much fanfare and re-launched the Palestinian – Israeli negotiations after a seven – year interruption since the collapse of the trilateral Camp David summit with the U.S. in 2000.

In Annapolis, Arab leaders and the Palestinian presidency were lured by a promise of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008 and a wider Arab – Israeli peace process, mainly on the Syrian track thereafter, to coexist with the inter-Palestinian divide between the PLO – led West Bank and the Hamas – led Gaza Strip and to grudgingly hide their bitter resentment of the U.S. – Israeli threat of siege, which had aborted Qatari, UAE, Saudi, Egyptian, Yemeni and other Arab and non – Arab mediation efforts to unify Palestinian ranks.

The Annapolis plan to implement the first stage of the 2003 Road Map for a Palestinian – Israeli political settlement has built on two pillars, the first a Palestinian – Israeli security coordination that is solely and directly monitored by three senior U.S. generals, namely James Jones, William Fraser and Keith Dayton, and the second pillar is inter – Palestinian divide between the PLO in Ramallah and Hamas in Gaza.

However, the failure of the “Annapolis process” could be better proved by the unmet deadline of 2008 and the un-honored promise of a Palestinian state, but the two pillars nonetheless survived the failure of Annapolis so far to perpetuate and exacerbate the Palestinian rift, with the security coordination raising accusations by Hamas of PLO collaboration with Israel and the divide developing into what threatens to become a permanent separation between the West Bank and Gaza.

There remain too at the core of the Annapolis process and at the heart of the Palestinian divide the three Israeli – U.S. “good conduct” preconditions that qualify Palestinians to be partners to peace negotiations as well as to evade military siege, economic blockade and diplomatic isolation, namely to unilaterally renounce violence without any guarantees of Israeli reciprocity, recognize the existence of the state of Israel without any Israeli reciprocal recognition of the state of Palestine, and commitment to the accords signed by the PLO with Israel regardless of Israeli reciprocal respect thereto.

Israel’s lack of reciprocity has come recently under spotlight by the refusal of the U.S. State Department to publish a report by its Middle East security envoy General James Jones on Palestinian – Israeli security, which the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, quoted by AFP on November 26, described in August as "an extremely critical report of Israel's policies" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

It is now public knowledge that the Palestinian partner to the Annapolis process, represented by the President Mahmoud Abbas – led Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), are wholeheartedly committed thereto irrespective of any Israeli reciprocity. The emergency meeting of the Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on November 26 concluded similarly committal, encouraged beforehand to let go the undelivered promises of the Annapolis conference by indications floated by both the Israeli President Shimon Peres and the U.S. President – elect Barak Obama’s team of their willingness to deal with the collective Arab peace initiative.

Hamas is consequently left in the cold to fend off a Palestinian and Arab diplomatic isolation as much as to survive the Israeli ongoing economic blockade and military siege, “hopefully” to gradually be finished off or alternatively to surrender to those same three preconditions to which its Palestinian rival had subscribed to as early as the Oslo accord was signed with Israel in Washington D.C. in 1993.

More out of presuming the weakness of Hamas than out of feeling a strength in his own position, but stiffening his back with the U.S. and Israeli determination to push hard with their three pre-qualifications, President Abbas feels safe enough to persistently reiterate his commitment to Annapolis and to corner the besieged Islamic movement to either dismantle voluntarily or otherwise being swept away in a way or another, and he is on record as saying that the end of the “black coup d’etat” in Gaza in June 2007 is only a matter of time.

However the end game of the Annapolis process is still far away from being the only game in the town as it is held hostage to Hamas’ fate as much as it has cornered Hamas, but meanwhile this process remains the detrimental factor that makes or breaks the unity of Palestinian ranks, as long as both Palestinian protagonists continue to risk it out in their brinkmanship policies.
______________________________________________________________________
Photo: 12 months ago: US President George W. Bush (C) walks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (L) and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas 27 November 2007 during the Annapolis Conference at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The Annapolis conference is aimed at restarting the stalled Middle East peace process.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit of the Israeli – occupied Palestinian West Bank.

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Saturday, 13 December 2008

Mumbai terror attacks and India’s response


Mumbai was not our 9/11 !
We’re at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.

By Arundhati Roy         12 December 2008                                    Muslim India 
South Asia Citizens Web

We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India’s 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It’s odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India’s richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir’s most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something’s going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.

We’re told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That’s absolutely true. It’s an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I’m sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn’t that war. That one’s still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn’t on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."

And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don’t care if I’m hanged ... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay ... I will finish them off … let a few more of them die ... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."

And where, in Side A’s scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening." Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."

(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)

All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi’s former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India’s biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.

Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.

If that’s not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.

In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain’s final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can’t seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi’s predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India’s bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.

By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.

This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn’t surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan’s ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today’s world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It’s almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let’s try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world’s most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America’s ally first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America’s jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.

Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan’s borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more than it does on India.

If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India’s shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It’s hard to understand why those who steer India’s ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan’s mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it’s the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don’t hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists’ nonchalant willingness to kill – and be killed – mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that’s worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it’s precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they’ve died, they’ve journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don’t want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You’re surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don’t you surrender?"

"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It’s better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn’t seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn’t it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don’t figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the aim of terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush’s famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn’t George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can’t seem to get away from.

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn’t surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We’re now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It’s an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we’re still learning. (If Kashmir won’t willingly integrate into India, it’s beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don’t really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India’s many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi’s Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia’s possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they’ve escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?

Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It’s not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they’re for people that governments don’t like. That’s why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They’re just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It’s what they want.

What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.
allvoices

Friday, 12 December 2008

Madrasa Reforms and Inter-Faith Dialogue

"Terrorism cannot be stamped out without also working to ensure justice to people who are pushed to the wall, who are oppressed by the police and agencies of the state and who do not get any justice from the courts"...Maulana Khalid Rehmani

By Yoginder Sikand                      12 December 2008                           Muslim India

Based in Hyderabad, Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rehmani is one of the leading present-day Indian ulema. Author of some 50 books, mainly on Islamic jurisprudence, he is a senior member of numerous important Islamic organizations, including the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, the Islamic Fiqh Academy, the Bahrain-based Association of Islamic Banks and the Council for Inter-Sectarian Dialogue, Tehran, Iran. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks about various issues related to madrasa education in India, particularly the question of madrasa reforms.

Q: Could you tell us something about your academic background?

A: I was born in Darbhanga in Bihar in 1957. I received my basic Islamic education at the renowned Jamia Rahmaniya in Munger, after which I went to the Dar ul-Ulum at Deoband for higher Islamic learning. Thereafter, I went to Phulwari Sharif where I completed the ifta course to become a qualified mufti under the well-known Islamic scholar Qazi Mujahidul Islam Qasmi. I was greatly influenced by Qazi Sahib's approach and thinking. He was among the few enlightened and broadminded Indian ulema of his times, seriously committed to dialogue between the different Islamic sects and also open to adopting the benefits of modern knowledge for expressing and interpreting Islam.

From Phulwari Sharif I came to Hyderabad and taught Quran, Hadith, Islamic Jurisprudence (fiqh) and Quranic commentary (tafsir) at the Dar ul-Ulum Hyderabad and the Dar ul-Ulum Sabil us-Salaam, two leading Deobandi madrasas in the city,. This I did for more than twenty years. Then, in 2000 I established the al-Mahad al-Ali al-Islami, a centre for higher Islamic learning in Hyderabad, which I still manage.

Q: What exactly are you trying to do through this centre?

A: The centre was conceived of as a means for promoting certain much-needed reforms in madrasas. As of now, it offers a two year course for senior graduates (fazils) of madrasas, where they study a host of disciplines that they might not ever have had to in their madrasas, such as English, Current Affairs, Comparative Religions and Computer Applications. Students are also made to engage in research work, something that is missing in almost all madrasas. Till now, over a hundred theses have been submitted by our students, many of them seeking to develop Islamically appropriate responses to various modern issues and concerns. The students are also taught the importance of working for communal harmony and how to properly relate to people of other faiths and to explain to them what Islam is actually about.

Q: Almost every madrasa is associated with a particular Islamic sect, and sectarian strife is rife among the ulema. What do you think is the way out?

A: I think the ulema have to realize, as indeed many already do, that these sectarian differences cannot be wished away. Each sect offers its own arguments and proofs for its position. God has given humans the capacity to think differently, and so obviously such differences will always exist. The point is to accept these differences and, despite them, to cooperate with them on common issues. This applies as much to intra-Muslim sectarian relations as it does to relations between Muslims and Hindus. We must learn to respect people of other sects and religions and to work together jointly with them on issues of common concern.

Q: What do you feel about the on-going debates on the question of madrasa reforms?

A: To properly understand the question, one has to keep the basic aim of the madrasas in mind: to produce good, learned, pious and committed Islamic scholars. It is not to produce graduates for the market whose main aim in life is to make money. So, naturally, moral training and Islamic subjects should remain the centre of the madrasa curriculum.

At the same time, we live in this world and so cannot afford to be ignorant of its issues, problems and concerns. This is why I strongly believe that madrasas need to familiarize their students with at least the basics of various forms of modern knowledge, such as English, Computer Applications, Indian History, the Indian Constitution, and natural and social sciences. Madrasas must conceive of ways to incorporate a basic modicum of these disciplines in their curriculum without this being allowed to harm its basic religious core.

Q: And how do you think this should happen? Perhaps through the Madrasa Boards?

A: I am opposed to the government interfering in the madrasas through government-appointed madrasa boards, which exist in some states. But I do admit the need for some sort of mechanism to bring about greater cooperation between the madrasas as well as to facilitate reforms. In this regard, some private madrasa boards, set up by the ulema themselves and totally independent of the government, have come up in some states. For instance, the Tahhafuz-e Madaris Committee in Gujarat and the Wafaq ul-Madaris in Bihar. In 2001 we set up the Andhra Pradesh Dini Madaris Board, of which Maulana Hamiduddin Aqil Husami of the Dar ul-Ulum Hyderabad is the President and I the General-Secretary. Through this board we are trying to bring about some changes in the madrasas in the state.

Q: What exactly are the activities of this Board?

A: The Board has basically two aims. Firstly, to preserve the autonomy of the madrasas. And secondly, to promote reforms and the moral and intellectual environment of madrasas. Around 150 madrasas in Andhra Pradesh are now affiliated with the Board. We organize teachers' training workshops and also regular meetings where we impress upon the ulema to introduce a basic modicum of modern subjects in the curricula of their madrasas, to properly register themselves and maintain proper accounts and so on.

Q: A major part of the existing curriculum in almost all madrasas consists of the teaching of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Many of these detailed rules and laws were devised centuries ago and may have lost their relevance in today's context. As someone who has written extensively on modern fiqh issues (jadid fiqhi masail) what do you have to say about reforms in this sphere?

A: I feel madrasas must give much more attention than they presently do to the principles of jurisprudence (usul-e fiqh), because while several minor fiqh details (juzuvi masail) can and do change over time, and hence require new interpretations, these basic principles are unchanging. Knowledge of these principles is essential for engaging in ijtihad or creative reflection with regard to a host of contemporary issues that were obviously unknown to the early Islamic scholars.

In addition to this, our students, as would-be ulema, also need to have a basic knowledge of modern subjects in order to provide adequate and appropriate fiqhi perspectives on them. For instance, we don't want to make them doctors, but surely for them to engage in ijtihad in modern medical matters they must have at least some knowledge of the human anatomy and physiology. Or, to respond to modern economic developments, they must have a basic understanding of the way modern economies function.

Another way to promote awareness of the need for ijtihad and for reflection on new jurisprudential issues within the madrasas is by promoting cooperation between the ulema of the madrasas and 'modern', university-educated intellectuals who are experts in particular fields. Thus, in the conferences of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, with which I am associated, we invite modern experts and professionals to provide their views and share their knowledge with the ulema, and both learn from each other. This is a way for promoting 'collective ijtihad' that benefits from the different forms of knowledge that these two classes of scholars possess. A large number of books on new and more contextually-relevant fiqh issues and perspectives have been printed by the Islamic Fiqh Academy as a result of this sort of joint effort.

Q: Madrasas have been given a bad press in recent years, being branded as 'dens of terrorism'. How do you respond to this charge?

A: I would say that almost all this propaganda about the Indian madrasas at least is completely false, and has not been proved in the courts. But if you look at parts of the world where terrorism is rife, no matter what the religion of its perpetrators, you will notice that very often it is denial of justice to vulnerable and victimized groups, often by the state itself, that breeds terrorism. Obviously, then, terrorism cannot be stamped out without also working to ensure justice to people who are pushed to the wall, who are oppressed by the police and agencies of the state and who do not get any justice from the courts. Of course, I do not at all mean to condone terrorism, even as a reaction to injustice, for the Quran itself says that the enmity of any community should not lead one to swerve from the path of justice. It also says that to kill a single innocent being—and here it does not specify the religion of that person—is such a heinous crime as to be akin to slaying the whole of humankind.

I think the time has come for people of all faiths—Muslims, Hindus, Dalits, Christians, Sikhs and others—who sincerely believe in peace and justice to join hands in a joint struggle against terrorism, which threatens to destroy our beloved country. I am glad that leading Indian ulema have realized the need for this, and are, accordingly, organizing huge public rallies to condemn all forms of terror, including that engaged in by self-styled 'Islamic' groups that are misusing and misinterpreting Islam for their sinister purposes.

Muslims in India face numerous challenges, including mounting Islamophobia. My advice is that we should not respond to hatred with counter-hatred, but, rather, with love and concern and through sincere efforts to reach out to people of other faiths.

Photo credit: The Al Azhar mosque and madrasa, center for Sunni Islam teaching

Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rehmani can be contacted on ksrehmani@yahoo.com

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Thursday, 11 December 2008

Real Security Should Accompany Real Justice


Of The 200 Killed In Mumbai, A High Number Were Muslims

South Asia Citizens Web              11 December 2008               Muslim India
Tehelka.com


ANAND PATWARDHAN argues that real security has to be accompanied by real justice.

In Mumbai, after the numbing sorrow came the blame game and the solutions. Loud voices amplified by saturation TV: Why don’t we amend our Constitution to create new anti-terror laws? Why don’t we arm our police with AK 47s? Why don’t we do what Israel did after Munich or the USA did after 9/11 and hot pursue the enemy? Solutions that would lead us further into the abyss. For terror is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It thrives on reaction, polarisation, militarisation and the thirst for revenge.

The External Terror

Those who invoke America need only to analyse if its actions after 9/11 increased or decreased global terror. It invaded oil-rich Iraq fully knowing that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, killing over 200,000 Iraqis citizens but allowing a cornered Bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan. It recruited global support for Islamic militancy, which began to be seen as a just resistance against American mass murder. Which begs the question of who created Bin Laden in the first place, armed the madarsas of Pakistan and rejuvenated the concept of Islamic jehad? Israel played its own role in stoking the fires of jehad. The very creation of Israel in 1948 robbed Palestinians of their land, an act that Mahatma Gandhi to his credit deplored at the time as an unjust way to redress the wrongs done to Jews during the Holocaust. What followed has been a slow and continuing attack on the Palestinian nation. At first Palestinian resistance was led by secular forces represented by Yasser Arafat but as these were successfully undermined, Islamic forces took over the mantle. The first, largely non-violent Intifada was crushed, a second more violent one replaced it and when all else failed, human bombs appeared.

Thirty years ago when I first went abroad there were two countries my Indian passport forbade me to visit. One was racist South Africa. The other was Israel. We were non-aligned and stood for disarmament and world peace. Today Israel and America are our biggest military allies. Is it surprising that we are on the jehadi hit list? Israel, America and other prosperous countries can to an extent protect themselves against the determined jehadi, but can India put an impenetrable shield over itself? Remember that when attackers are on a suicide mission, the strongest shields have crumbled. New York was laid low not with nuclear weapons but with a pair of box cutters. India is for many reasons a quintessentially soft target. Our huge population, vast landmass and coastline are impossible to protect. The rich may build new barricades. The Taj and the Oberoi can be made safer. So can our airports and planes. Can our railway stations and trains, bus stops, busses, markets and lanes do the same?

The Terror Within

The threat of terror in India does not come exclusively from the outside. Apart from being hugely populated by the poor India is also a country divided, not just between rich and poor, but by religion, caste and language. This internal divide is as potent a breeding ground for terror as jehadi camps abroad. Nor is jehad the copyright of one religion alone. It can be argued that international causes apart, India has jehadis that are fully home grown. Perhaps the earliest famous one was Nathuram Godse who acting at the behest of his mentor Vinayak Savarkar (still referred to as “Veer” or “brave” although he refused to own up to his role in the conspiracy), murdered Mahatma Gandhi for the crime of championing Muslims.

Jump forward to 6th December, 1992, the day Hindu fanatics demolished the Babri Mosque setting into motion a chain of events that still wreaks havoc today. From the Bombay riots of 1992 to the bomb blasts of 1993, the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 and hundreds of smaller deadly events, the last 16 years have been the bloodiest since Partition. Action has been followed by reaction in an endless cycle of escalating retribution. At the core on the Hindu side of terror are organizations that openly admire Adolph Hitler, nursing the hate of historic wrongs inflicted by Muslims. Ironically these votaries of Hitler remain friends and admirers of Israel.

On the Muslim side of terror are scores of disaffected youth, many of whom have seen their families tortured and killed in more recent pogroms. Christians too have fallen victim to recent Hindutva terror but as yet not formed the mechanisms for revenge. Dalits despite centuries of caste oppression, have not yet retaliated in violence although a small fraction is being drawn into an armed struggle waged by Naxalites.

It is clear that no amount of spending on defense, no amount of patrolling the high seas, no amount of increasing the military and police and equipping them with the latest weaponry can end the cycle of violence or place India under a bubble of safety. Just as nuclear India did not lead to more safety, but only to a nuclear Pakistan, no amount of homeland security can save us. And inviting Israel’s Mossad and America’s CIA/FBI to the security table is like giving the anti-virus contract to those who spread the virus in the first place. It can only make us more of a target for the next determined jehadi attack.

Policing, Justice and the Media

As for draconian anti-terror laws, they too only breed terror as for the most part they are implemented by a state machinery that has imbibed majoritarian values. So in Modi’s Gujarat after the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in 2002, despite scores of confessions to rape and murder captured on hidden camera, virtually no Hindu extremists were punished while thousands of Muslims rotted in jail under draconian laws. The same happened in Bombay despite the Shiv Sena being found guilty by the Justice Shrikrishna Commission. Under pressure a few cases were finally brought to trial but all escaped with the lightest of knuckle raps. In stark contrast many Muslims accused in the 1993 bomb blasts were given death sentences.

The bulk of our media, policing and judicial systems swallows the canard that Muslims are by nature violent. Removing democratic safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution can only make this worse. Every act of wrongful imprisonment and torture that then follows is likely to turn innocents into material for future terrorists to draw upon. Already the double standards are visible. While the Students Islamic Movement of India is banned, Hindutva outfits like the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and the Shiv Sena remain legal entities. The leader of the MNS, Raj Thackeray recently openly spread such hatred that several north Indians were killed by lynch mobs. Amongst these were the Dube brothers, doctors from Kalyan who treated the poor for a grand fee of Rs.10 per patient. Raj Thackeray like his uncle Bal before him, remains free after issuing public threats that Bombay would burn if anyone had the guts to arrest him. Modi remains free despite the pogroms of Gujarat. Congress party murderers of Sikhs in 1984 remain free. Justice in India is clearly not there for all. Increasing the powers of the police cannot solve this problem. Only honest and unbiased implementation of laws that exist, can.

It is a tragedy of the highest proportions that one such honest policeman, Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the thread of Hindutva terror was himself gunned down, perhaps by Muslim terror. It is reported that Col. Purohit and fellow Hindutva conspirators now in judicial custody, celebrated the news of Karkare’s death. Until Karkare took charge, the Malegaon bomb blasts in which Muslims were killed and the Samjhauta Express blasts in which Pakistani visitors to India were killed were being blamed on Muslims. Karkare exposed a hitherto unknown Hindutva outfit as masterminding a series of killer blasts across the country. For his pains Karkare came under vicious attack not just from militant Hindutva but from the mainstream BJP. He was under tremendous pressure to prove his patriotism. Was it this that led this senior officer to don helmet and ill-fitting bullet proof vest and rush into battle with a pistol? Or was it just his natural instinct, the same courage that had led him against all odds, to expose Hindutva terror?

Whatever it was, it only underlines the fact that jehadis of all kinds are actually allies of each other. So Bin Laden served George Bush and vice-versa. So Islamic and Hindutva jehadis have served each other for years. Do they care who dies? Of the 200 people killed in the last few days by Islamic jehadis, a high number were Muslims. Many were waiting to board trains to celebrate Eid in their hometowns in UP and Bihar, when their co-religionists gunned them down. Shockingly the media has not commented on this, nor focused on the tragedy at the railway station, choosing to concentrate on tragedies that befell the well-to-do. And it is the media that is leading the charge to turn us into a war-mongering police state where we may lead lives with an illusion of safety, but with the certainty of joylessness.

I am not arguing that we do not need efficient security at public places and at vulnerable sites. But real security will only come when it is accompanied by real justice, when the principles of democracy are implemented in every part of the country, when the legitimate grievances of people are not crushed, when the arms race is replaced by a race for decency and humanity, when our children grow up in an atmosphere where religious faith is put to the test of reason. Until such time we will remain at the mercy of “patriots” and zealots.
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South Asia Citizens Web
Human chain against terrorMuslim women hold hands as they form a human chain as a series of citizen initiatives to express anger and demand action from the government.
allvoices

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

Jaipur public tribunal on terror in the name of countering terror

By Yoginder Sikand         10 December 2008                 Muslim India

TwoCircles.net

While state terror and terror unleashed by Hindutva groups rightly deserve to be condemned, for us to turn a blind eye to terror engaged by radical Islamist groups is not just unacceptable, unfair and unethical, but also, from the point of view of our joint struggle against all forms of terror, which feed on each other, extremely counter-productive. Yoginder Sikand elaborates...

Last month, the Rajasthan unit of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, along with several other human rights' groups, organised a two-day public hearing in Jaipur on the theme State Responses in the Name of Countering Terrorism and Religious Conversion. It was attended by a large number of activists from various parts of Rajasthan and beyond.

In his opening remarks, the noted social activist and scholar Ram Puniyani spoke about how communal violence in India is now being rapidly transformed into organized pogroms against Muslims in which key sections of the state and the media are playing a major role. Condemning all forms of terror, including that engaged in by some fringe Muslim outfits, Puniayni opined that what he called 'Hindutva terrorism' today threatens to take the form of full-blown fascism, which, while ostensibly targeted against Muslims and Christians, actually aims at preserving the status quo in terms of caste/class relations and also in promoting global imperialist forces. Lamenting the silence of the media on 'Hindutva terrorism', he claimed that it was possible that several other terror attacks that India has recently witnessed other than those that occurred in Malegaon could also have been the handiwork of Hindutva groups. He stressed the importance of public tribunals as this one to articulate the voices of the victims of state terror in a context when there was little hope for justice from the courts and the state machinery. 'There now seem to be two different systems of justice in this country', he claimed, arguing that it was increasingly difficult for Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and the poor in general to gain succour from the courts, the police and the media.

Sandeep Pandey

Magsaysay Award-winner and social activist from Lucknow Sandeep Pandey spoke at length about what he saw as the deliberate hounding of innocent Muslim youths across the country wrongly accused by the police and intelligence agencies of being involved in acts of terror. He focussed particularly on one case that he has sought to intervene in—that of a Muslim youth from Lucknow, Shahbaz Hussain, who continues to be in jail, accused of being behind the deadly bomb attacks that ripped through Jaipur some months ago. Pandey and some of his colleagues had visited Shahbaz's house and were convinced, so he said, that he was actually innocent. He cited another instance where he had personally intervened to help stop a fake encounter that had been planned by a police officer and an army colonel involving a Kashmiri youth whom they had planned to shoot and then falsely brand as a terrorist. This had been plotted soon after what Pandey called the 'fake Batla House encounter'. The intention, he said, was probably to 'prove' that just as the police in other states were picking up Muslims whom they had accused of as being 'terrorists', the UP police 'wanted to show that they, too, were doing something.'

Nilabh Mishra, editor of the Outlook Hindi magazine, echoed somewhat the same sentiments. He accused sections of the media for simply parroting the police version of events in cases of terror attacks for which Muslims were invariably blamed, and remarked how the mounting anti-Muslim prejudices spread by this section of the media was doing irreparable harm to inter-community relations in the country and communalizing vital pillars of the state machinery, including the police and the judiciary. 'This represents an organised effort to hijack the pillars of the establishment', he stressed.

Senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan remarked about how he believed that 'Hindutva organizations in India enjoy almost unfettered freedom to defy the law, to massacre people in their hundreds, with no action being taken by the state against them.' And, despite this, he added, 'they are referred to as patriots, not as terrorists, which is what they actually are.' He pointed out that Hindutva forces are desperately seeking to export what they call the 'Gujarat model' all mover the country by resorting to terror attacks, blaming them on Muslims and then seeking to galvanise Hindu support. He spoke about the large number of Muslim youths, wrongly accused of being terrorists, who continue to languish in jails. Several incarcerated Muslims, who, when found innocent by the courts and released, do not even get an apology, let alone any compensation for being picked up, imprisoned and even brutally tortured. For the rest of their lives these people are tainted in the eyes of society, and often even their close relatives want to have nothing to do with them for fear of being suspected by the police of being 'terrorist'-sympathisers.

Bhushan was bitterly critical of the role of the police, large sections of which, he said, were biased against Muslims and who themselves violate the law that they are meant to uphold. In this regard, he called for the setting up of a high-powered enquiry commission consisting of three retired Supreme Court judges to go into the numerous cases of 'fake' and 'communalised' investigations by the police in terror attacks. He noted that a police complaints authority had been suggested by the Supreme Court some years ago, and remarked that this is yet to be set up. He also called for adequate representation of Muslims and other vulnerable minorities in the police force. In addition, he suggested the need for a high-powered international tribunal to examine the very real threats to secularism and democracy in India.

Noted Delhi-based columnist Girish Nikam voiced similar concerns. Reflecting on his own experience of having worked in the 'mainstream' media for several years, he said that the attitude of large sections of the media to the issue of terrorism was 'indefensible', in particular their relative silence on Hindutva terror and their sensational reporting of cases of Muslims being accused of terrorism even in cases when no firm evidence had been brought against them. This reflected what he said was a deep-rooted sentiment held by many that Muslims were to be presumed guilty until proven innocent. And, he added, any critique of this policy is often quickly branded as 'anti-national'.

Others who testified at the tribunal included Kavita Srivastava, head of the Rajasthan unit of the PUCL, Tej Kumar, an advocate who has taken up the case of some Rajasthani Muslim youth accused of as terrorists, as well as several men and women from various parts of Rajasthan whose relatives continue to languish in jail and some others who had been arrested on false charges but were later released.

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Public tribunals like this one serve a valuable purpose, enabling victims to articulate their voices when these continue to go unheard in the corridors of power. However, given the fact that, particularly in the wake of the recent Mumbai attacks, the issue of terrorism has assumed alarming proportions and the role of fringe radical Islamist terror in fomenting strife in India groups cannot be ignored, it is imperative that human rights groups take a broader and more balanced perspective. While state terror and terror unleashed by Hindutva groups rightly deserve to be condemned, for us to turn a blind eye to terror engaged by radical Islamist groups is not just unacceptable, unfair and unethical, but also, from the point of view of our joint struggle against all forms of terror, which feed on each other, extremely counter-productive.

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Photo credit: The Hawah Mahal in Jaipur

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