A Wretched Day for Democracy: Revocation of the Special Status of Kashmir by NYLA ALI KHAN

Posted on August 14, 2019 by kf1

The India that Jammu and Kashmir acceded to in 1947 had chosen democracy, secularism, and socialism as its goals. Although the Praja Parishad, predecessor of the RSS, was determined to foist a solution of the entire Kashmir issue along communal lines even prior to 1953, and its leaders had been vocal about their views, it was heartwarming that India had chosen democracy and secularism as its goals.

Democracy does not, however, merely mean conducting elections every five years, but it is, substantively, a way of life and a way of thinking. In a democracy, the majority will prevail, but it is equally incumbent on the majority to respect and defend the legitimate interests and sentiments of minorities and to alleviate their apprehensions.

The greatest test of the success of Indian democracy lies in the extent to which its minorities feels secure and content. Continue reading →

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Rattling the Nuclear Cage: India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and the US by ROBERT FISK

Posted on August 14, 2019 by kf1

We like our anniversaries in blocks of 50 or 100 – at a push we’ll tolerate a 25. The 100th anniversary of the Somme (2016), the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain (2015). Next year, we’ll remember the end of the Second World War, the first – and so far the only – nuclear war in history.

This week marks only the 74th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It doesn’t fit in to our journalistic scorecards and “timelines”. Over the past few days, I’ve had to look hard to find a headline about the two Japanese cities.

But, especially in the Middle East and what we like to call southeast Asia, we should be remembering these gruesome anniversaries every month. Hiroshima was atomic-bombed 74 years ago on Tuesday, Nagasaki 74 years ago on Friday. Given the extent of the casualty figures, you’d think they’d be unforgettable. But we don’t quite know (nor ever will) what they were. Continue reading →

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India Annexes Kashmir and Brings Us Back to Partition By Mohammed Hanif

Posted on August 14, 2019 by kf1

LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistani kids are taught in and out of school that Kashmir is our “shah rug” (jugular vein). Indians believe that Kashmir is their “atoot ang” (indispensable body part). Urdu and Persian poetry is full of paeans to the beauty of Kashmir. If there is paradise on earth, “it is this, it is this, it is this,” the 14th-century poet Amir Khusro wrote. Since the time of Partition, 72 years ago, India and Pakistan have been fighting wars over Kashmir and calling each other the occupier and the oppressor of the Kashmiris.

Occasionally, there have been halfhearted pledges that the Kashmiri people should probably get to do what they want with their paradise. In 1948, the United Nations Security Council called for a plebiscite so that Kashmiris could decide their own fate. No such thing has happened. I have a couple of friends from both sides of the Kashmir dispute, and they have always said that more than freedom, any special status or merging with India or Pakistan, they would like to be left alone. By both India and Pakistan.

Whatever these and other Kashmiris have wanted, I am certain they didn’t want what they got this week: Kashmir’s special status, and relative autonomy, under India’s Constitution revoked. Some 35,000 more soldiers in the world’s most militarized region, schools shut, offices shut, the internet snatched away, landlines dead. Local political leaders — even those happy to collaborate with the Indian authorities in New Delhi — locked up. A former chief minister of the region said, hours before being arrested, that it had been a mistake to side with India at Partition. And now India is taking us back to Partition all over again by annexing Kashmir and throwing millions of its citizens in a cage.

Many Indians are cheerleading this imprisonment. The actor Anupam Kher tweeted with glee that the “Kashmir solution” had gotten off to a great start. Experts are writing that the Kashmiri people have enjoyed too many privileges all the while questioning their affiliation with India: You see, young men in the Kashmir Valley sometimes chant pro-Pakistan slogans and celebrate the occasional victory of Pakistan over India in cricket matches by waving Pakistani flags.

Continue reading →

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Article 370: Why is Kashmir tense about it & what can India do

Posted on August 14, 2019 by kf1

Centre’s move to revoke Article 370 will go down as one of the most significant initiatives to change a provision in our constitution- that was considered sacrosanct for a very longtime. Until today, Article 370 was considered to be the very thread that kept Jammu & Kashmir tied to India. But this was changed to some extent as Home Minister Amit Shah read out a Presidential notification on the future of J&K and moved a proposal to repeal Article 370.


Shah, read out a presidential notification that stated the decision to scrap the contentiousArticle 370 and to bifurcate the state into two Union territories – Jammu and Kashmir, which will have a legislature, and Ladakh, which will be without a legislature.

Giving a speech amid uproar by opposition members, he said,”I am presenting the resolution to revoke Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir except the first clause 370 (1).” Home Minister Amit Shah in a statement last week had pointed that Article 370 was a ‘temporary provision’. Here’s why Article 370 is such a contentious issue at this moment. Continue reading →

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Trump’s Evidence About Iran is “Dodgy” at Best by ROBERT FISK

Posted on June 18, 2019 by kf1

The crackpot president of the United States of America has so snarled up the gangplank to truth these past 29 months that no matter how much “evidence” he and his crew produce to prove that the Iranians have been trying to blow up oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman – or not quite blow them up – the pictures have a kind of mesmeric quality about them.

Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration photos were edited to “prove” that there were more supporters on the Washington Mall than actually went there. And now his administration, anxious to prove that the Iranians are attacking oil tankers, releases video footage of Iranians actually removing a limpet mine from the hull of a Japanese vessel.

Well that proves it then, doesn’t it? Those pesky Iranians can’t even bomb their targets professionally – so they go back later to retrieve a mine because it probably says “Made in Iran” on the explosives. Continue reading →

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Manufacturing Islamophobia on WhatsApp in India – Soma Basu

Posted on May 17, 2019 by kf1

“Real or fake, we can make any message go viral,” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah claimed in September 2018 while addressing social media volunteers in Kota, Rajasthan.

“It is through social media that we have to form governments at the state and national levels. Keep making messages go viral. We have already made a WhatsApp group with 32 lakh [editor’s note: that’s 3.2 million] people in Uttar Pradesh; every morning they are sent a message at 8 a.m.,” Shah was quoted by the Dainik Bhaskar, a Hindi newspaper.

The video is still up on BJP’s YouTube channel where Shah is heard saying how disinformation could spread to create “perception” and the importance of WhatsApp in that endeavor. And the BJP is more equipped to create such perceptions than any other party in India, with its large volunteer base and extensive resources.

Welcome to the Indian Ministry of Truth, where the ruling BJP, with the effective use of social media, is creating a “perception” and implanting false memories in Hindus, 70 percent of the Indian population, that they are under threat from a rising Muslim population. Continue reading →

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Health funding gap means 1,700 in Gaza may face amputations: U.N.

Posted on May 10, 2019 by kf1

GENEVA (Reuters) – A lack of health funding in Gaza means 1,700 people shot by Israeli security forces may have to have amputations in the next two years, Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for occupied Palestinian territory, told reporters on Wednesday.

McGoldrick said 29,000 Palestinians had been wounded in protests in the past year, and 7,000 of them had gunshot wounds, mostly in the lower legs.

“You’ve got 1,700 people who are in need of serious, complicated surgeries for them to be able to walk again,” McGoldrick said.

“These are people who have been shot during the demonstrations and who are in need of rehabilitation, and very, very serious and complex bone reconstruction surgery over a two year period before they start to rehabilitate themselves.”

Continue reading →

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Ishmael and Isaac: An Essay on the Divergent Moral Economies of the Quran and the Torah By M. Shahid Alam

Posted on May 9, 2019 by kf1

Abstract

The Torah and the Qur’an offer different conceptions of individual autonomy. Thesedifferences are best illustrated by the manner in which the two scriptures deal with theepisode of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son. In the Torah, Abraham neither informs nor consults with Isaac about the sacrifice. In the Qur’an, Abraham seeks and receivesIshmael’s consent before proceeding with the near-sacrifice.

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“My son, I have seen myself sacrificing you in a dream. Consider, then, what would be your view.” Qur’an 37: 102 [1]

In their accounts of Abraham’s near-sacrifice, the Torah and Qur’an differ in several specifics that are not merely incidental.[2] Instead, they may be read as pointers to the divergent moral economies[3] of the two central sacred texts of Judaism and Islam. This essay will focus on these two scriptures alone not the rabbinic commentaries or the Qur’anic exegeses that seek to interpret or embellish the narrative about the near-sacrifice.[4]

The narratives of the near-sacrifice in these scriptures share the same basic plot. God commands Abraham, his righteous servant, to sacrifice his son. Abraham submits to the command, but God stays his hand just as he lays his knife on his son’s neck. Abraham passes the test of faith even as God spares his son, and God rewards him for his obedience.

The Torah is not reticent in setting out genealogies or halachic rulings, but, important as Abraham’s trial is to its moral economy, it devotes a little less than one chapter in the Genesis -some nineteen verses -to this defining moment in the life of Abraham. In its retelling of this episode, the Qur’an outdoes the Torah in brevity: it completes its account of Ishmael’s near­ sacrifice in only eight contiguous verses.[5] In these examples of scriptural reticence, there is obscurity, mystery and bafflement, leading, in turn, to unending attempts by exegetes to supply the ‘gaps’ in the narrative concerning what might have gone on between God and His human and angelic interlocutors- Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Sarah, Hagar, the angels, and others -between the human interlocutors, or inside their heads. Continue reading →

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Muslim Parties Must be Included in Arab Spring Reform By Ghassan Michel Rubeiz

Posted on May 9, 2019 by kf1

The leaders of the protests in Sudan and Algeria are aware that ending their old regimes does not mean the end of political Islam. But they are not at all clear about the necessity of inclusiveness in state building. A group of demonstrators attacked the meeting of the (Islamic) Popular Congress Party in Khartoum on April 28. This incident is not the start of a serious trend of chaos but a reminder that cracks within the opposition groups could get worse. The army intervened to prevent escalation: 64 individuals were injured.

Staunch secularist reformers might wish to exclude conservative Muslim groups from participating in the transitions. The April 28 attack provides an added pretext for the military to hold on to power. Respecting minority opinion is at the heart of building democracy.

Maybe it is too early for the protestors to focus on their own differences when they are struggling to resolve differences with the military. The reluctance of the Sudanese and Algerian militaries to transfer power to civilians—after the abdication of the two former presidents—is not justified, but it is explainable. The military rationalizes its reluctance as a legitimate position of “respect for the constitution.” However, the military is really most interested in self-preservation. In Sudan, the army is holding onto power by attempting to save a failing Islamic regime; in Algeria, meanwhile, the military is trying to save the regime by suppressing political Islam in the name of democracy. Continue reading →

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Behind the U.S. Labeling of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a Terrorist Organization by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH

Posted on May 9, 2019 by kf1

It can be readily demonstrated that the proffered U.S. justifications for labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization are no more than harebrained excuses designed to put further pressure on the Iranian people in pursuit of its long-standing policy of regime change from within. Indeed, it can reasonably be argued that, in light of the fact the U.S. has repeatedly terrorized many peoples and nations in various parts of the world, its designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization represents an ironic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Considering the fact that between 25 and 30 percent of the Iranian economy is owned and/or operated by the Revolutionary Guards, sanctioning of the organization’s economic activities, especially its foreign trade, is bound to further depress Iran’s economy and, hence, its people’s living conditions. Combined with the economic mismanagement of President Rouhani’s administration, the U.S. economic war on Iran has provided fertile grounds for discontent and anger among the masses of the Iranian people who suffer from the crushing impact of U.S. sanctions, on the one hand, and the Rouhani government’s economic mismanagement, on the other.

In pursuit of its long-standing strategy to bring Iran back into the orbit of its client states in the region, the U.S. has consistently employed two destabilizing tactics. The first is to exert enough pressure on Iran to force its rulers to submit to its will and stop resisting its geopolitical designs in the region. This is called “behavior change without regime change.” The second tactic, applied in case of the failure of the first, is to wield enough economic pressure on the Iranian people to incite them to rebellion in pursuit of regime change from inside. Continue reading →

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