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Indian Press On Love Jihad Legislative Remedies, Assassinated Iranian Nuclear Scientist And Pakistan: New Age Islam's Selection, 2 December 2020


By New Age Islam Edit Desk

2 December 2020

• 'Love Jihad': Why Legislative Remedies Must Not Be Dismissed

By Makarand R Paranjape

•  Love Jihad’ Law

Editorial, Tribune India

• A Narrative Pakistan Can’t Just Shrug Off

By Owen Bennett-Jones

• Why India Need Not Worry About Pakistan’s Efforts To Instigate OIC

By Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty

•   Tightrope Walk In The Gulf

By Shyam Saran

• Israel’s Sabotage Hasn’t Destroyed Iran’s Nuclear Programme, But Has Set It Back

By Eli Lake

• Top Iranian Nuclear Scientist’s Assassination & How It Will Impact US Diplomacy In Middle East

The Print Team

• BJP’s ‘Battle’ For Hyderabad: Here’s Why Local Muslims Are Anxious

By Kingshuk Nag

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'Love Jihad': Why Legislative Remedies Must Not Be Dismissed

By Makarand R Paranjape

02nd December 2020

 

For representational purposes (Express Illustrations/tapas ranjan)

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The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, came into force after Governor Anandiben Patel’s approval on November 27. Now ‘dishonest’ conversions by ‘force, coercion, enticement, deceit and fraud’, including for purposes of marriage, will be cognisable, non-bailable offences.

The penalties vary, from between one-year and five-year jail terms and fines of Rs 15,000 for adult conversions to a maximum imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of Rs 50,000 if minors, Schedule Castes/Tribes or collective conversions are involved. Uttar Pradesh is the first state legally to target ‘love jihad’, but other BJP-ruled states, such as Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka are reportedly expected to follow suit.

Does this mean one cannot change one’s religion in UP? No. That would violate fundamental rights as enshrined in our Constitution. Those who wish to convert can still do so by applying to the district magistrate two months in advance. Similarly, inter-religious marriages, without conversion, can still be solemnised quite easily under the provisions of the Special Marriages Act. The UP Ordinance is only aimed at quick conversions for the sake of marriage or some other dishonest reason.

The Ordinance nowhere mentions ‘love jihad’. Also, no religion is specified. That makes us wonder why its opponents are calling it ‘anti-Muslim’. The law would apply equally to a Muslim woman wishing to convert to Hinduism to marry a Hindu man or, which would be ever so rare, of a Muslim man wanting to become a Hindu to marry a Hindu woman. The fact that the Ordinance is being called anti-Muslim only shows that more Hindus, especially women, enter Islam than the other way round.

Unfortunately, the Ordinance, and the term ‘love jihad’ have become an inter-religious and inter-party issue. Once again, Hindutva is being blamed for going against the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and for trying to police the private lives and choices of individuals. Both objections are somewhat misplaced if we look at the context and history of inter-religious relations in the subcontinent and elsewhere.

The expansion of Islam was not only by conquest or voluntary conversion but by the incorporation of large numbers of female and child captives and slaves. In turn, the latter’s children automatically became Muslims. An ever-expanding Umma, or community of believers, being the professed mission of Islam, law and custom legitimated absorption of women from other faith traditions into Islamic society.

When conquered people were more respectably integrated, slavery and concubinage were upgraded to plural marriages with non-Muslim noble or upper-class women, as in the Mughal harem. Indeed, peaceable relations with inferior powers or vassals were often predicated on the marriage of the latter’s daughters into the Mughal royal family. Skip several centuries to the horrors of India’s Partition. The abduction of Hindu and Sikh women, with the inevitable retaliation from the other side, became part of the standard operating procedure of bloodthirsty communal mobs.

The horrible script of shame, dishonour, humiliation, mutilation and revenge was often carved on the bodies of women of both communities.In contemporary times, rampant sexual slavery, especially of Yazidis, in territories overrun by the Islamic State has been well-documented. Even in less unstable countries like neighbouring Pakistan, what we are witnessing today is systematic ethnic cleansing through the final stages of conversion and erasure of communities. The abduction, forcible conversion and marriage of Hindu and Christian girls by Muslim men is an almost daily occurrence.

The fact that our super-secularists ignore, either deliberately or through colossal ignorance, is the fundamental asymmetry between Abrahamic and Indic religions. The latter, in fact, are not even religions in the Abrahamic sense. They are not based on the special covenant of a chosen people with a singular and jealous God, but are essentially plural in both precept and practice. What this means in real-world terms is that there is no objection in Indic religions to desist from the worship of one deity or commence the worship of another.

In contrast, Abrahamic religions have mandated the worst punishments for apostasy, including torture or death in this world and eternal damnation afterwards. Even today, being an ex-Muslim, as we know in the case of world-famous heretics such as Taslima Nasreen or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is fraught with great danger to life and limb.

It is in this historic context that we need to view the UP Ordinance. While any modern, democratic state must ensure freedom of choice of religion and of sexual partners, even orientation, to its citizens, it must also safeguard minors and other vulnerable sections of society from forcible or false inducements into fraudulent marriage or religious conversion.

It may be true that while the Ordinance reflects an anxiety in Hindu society, including the fear of demographic decline, some safeguards to its culture, traditions, religious practices and ways of life must also be granted to the majority community. After all, the founders of our nation and the makers of our Constitution did not intend to turn India into a minoritarian or anti-Hindu state.

While more statistics are needed, figures from Kerala show that from 2009-2012, as many as 33 times more marriageable women from other faiths converted to Islam than Muslim women to other faiths. Not just Hindus, but several Christian denominations in the state have expressed concern over this trend. ‘Love Jihad’, thus, is not easy to dismiss or demonise as a paranoid Hindu fantasy as some hard-line secularists have tried. Whether ordinances such as UP’s are the best way to tackle this is, of course, another question altogether.

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Makarand R  Paranjape is Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Views are personal

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2020/dec/02/love-jihad-why-legislative-remedies-must-not-be-dismissed-2230716.html

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Love Jihad’ Law

Editorial, Tribune India

Dec 02, 2020

 

A month after the Allahabad High Court observed that religious conversion for the purpose of marriage is unacceptable, the Uttar Pradesh Government has enforced an ordinance ostensibly aimed at curbing forcible or fraudulent conversions, including those for the sake of tying the knot. The onus to prove that the conversion has not been done forcibly will lie on the accused and the convert, which implies that the former will be considered ‘guilty until proven innocent’ and not the other way round. The UP law, which strikes at the root of personal liberty and individual choice, runs the risk of being misused to the detriment of a legally recognised union between consenting adults.

The first case under this legislation, which intends to crack down on ‘love jihad’ but doesn’t mention the controversial term, has been registered in Bareilly district on a man’s complaint that a youth from his village lured his daughter and was now forcing her to convert. ‘Love jihad’ is touted as a grand conspiracy under which Muslim men are out to convert Hindu women to Islam on the pretext of marriage. However, lack of clinching evidence in most cases has largely rendered it a figment of paranoid imagination. In 2009, the Kerala High Court had directed the state police chief to find out whether there was any organised movement to convert Christian and Hindu girls to Islam by dangling the marital bait. The probe found no conclusive proof to establish the existence of such a movement or the veracity of the allegations.

Marriage is primarily a social and legal institution rather than a religious one. Unleashing the law on an inter-faith couple that duly completes the formalities for the registration of marriage reeks of prejudice and vendetta. The fact that the governments of some other BJP-ruled states are preparing to jump on to the anti-conversion bandwagon has fuelled speculation that the common objective is to demonise a minority community and criminalise conversion even by choice. Such draconian provisions are eventually an assault on our Constitution, which equally entitles all citizens to freely practise any religion. And love is meant to be celebrated, not sacrificed at the altar of religion.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/editorials/love-jihad-law-178668

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A Narrative Pakistan Can’t Just Shrug Off

By Owen Bennett-Jones

December 2, 2020

 

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For many decades now the military establishment in Rawalpindi has been complaining that the West has a narrative about Pakistan that is both unfair and impossible to change. This version of Pakistan, they argue, goes something like this: Pakistan is two-faced, pretending to fight militancy when in fact it supports violent jihadists. Furthermore, Pakistan is a badly governed basket case, obsessed with an unwinnable struggle for Kashmir, rendering it unnecessarily hostile to India.

The establishment’s attempt to overturn the key element of this narrative — support for militancy — has gone through two main phases. Before 9/11 it simply denied that it was supporting militants. And then, more recently, it has pointed to the army’s victories over the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas and other parts of northwest Pakistan. To the frustration of successive army chiefs, however, neither approach has shifted the prevailing narrative.

Narratives are extraordinarily durable. Edward Said’s argument about Orientalism — that the West had hard-set, irrational perceptions about the East — amounted to a description of a narrative according to which the East is filled with exotic, irrational, lazy people who continually fail to make the most of Western efforts to show them a better way to live. That set of ideas has been so enduring that it informed not only 19th-century colonialism but also President Bush’s 2003 war in Iraq.

Drones provide another example. When the US was using unmanned aerial vehicles against Al Qaeda and other targets in Fata and Afghanistan, journalists in the West and Pakistan were united in reporting that they killed more civilians than militants, helped Al Qaeda and were a breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty. In the later years of the drone programme, however, none of these things were true.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which for years made a very thorough attempt to monitor drone victims, found that between 2013 and 2018 drones killed a minimum of three and a maximum of 15 civilians. That compared with over 300 militants killed. It is not the ratio that most people believe to be true. As for Al Qaeda, internal documents from the organisation released in the course of various US court cases, revealed that drones were the single most effective weapon it faced. Meetings of Al Qaeda operatives became impossible for fear that they would be droned. And the arguments about drones breaching Pakistani sovereignty were always bogus. The drones, after all, took off from a Pakistani airbase. And yet for all that, even the US, despite all its mastery of the media management, was unable to shift the narrative about drones.

That’s not to say that narratives can never be changed. In the UK one of the main two political parties, the Labour Party, suffered election defeats in 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992. The party was portrayed by the press as high-taxing, extremist and weak on law and order. After the fourth defeat, a small group of reformers attached themselves to Tony Blair and, rebranding the party as ‘New Labour’, began to challenge the narrative. It took some years but with ruthless control of media messaging and some genuine party reforms, they were able to change the way the party was portrayed in the media and in 1997 Tony Blair was swept to victory.

So where does all that leave the generals hoping to change the narrative about Pakistan? The claims that, in fact, Pakistan does not support militants have faced a couple of problems. First everyone now realises that the much-proclaimed arrests of militant leaders are invariably followed by their quietly being released. And then, from time to time, people such as Gen Musharraf, let the cat of the bag by saying Pakistan does support some militant groups.

Even if the ISPR was able to keep everyone on message, Pakistan cannot escape the fact that after 9/11 Pakistan’s policy towards militants could hardly have come under closer scrutiny. Western armies have long since reached a view on what was happening and it’s impossible to imagine a media campaign being sufficient to change their view.

So, if a well-executed media policy is not going to subvert the narrative, that leaves the option of genuine policy changes. At which point Pakistan’s strategists need to take a view on whether it is at this stage worth switching to a new approach. As the US campaign in Afghanistan winds down, Washington is no longer focused on Af-Pak. When he becomes president, Joe Biden is highly unlikely to see Pakistan as a place where he should be sending much foreign aid. All of which suggests that even if Pakistan did change its policy on militants, the foreign aid gains may not outweigh the benefits, as the military strategists see it, of having militants project Pakistani power in the region.

https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/narrative-pakistan-cant-just-shrug-off-1502938466.html

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Why India Need Not Worry About Pakistan’s Efforts To Instigate OIC

By Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty

01 Dec 2020

The Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) grabs media headlines in India rarely, except when it issues a statement on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). The 57-member organisation comprises Islamic countries which include India’s neighbours Bangladesh, Maldives and Pakistan.

The OIC’s declared goal is to protect the interests of the Muslim world, in a spirit of harmony with other peoples for the promotion of peace and harmony. Lofty words, similar to the noble cause of international peace and security that is the goal of the UN.

The fact remains that the OIC is an organisation of Islamic countries and hence is seen as a ‘communal’ institution in the Indian discourse.

India has had a rocky relationship with the OIC, ever since it was invited and then not allowed to participate, in the first OIC Summit in Morocco in 1969, in the face of opposition by Pakistan.

After the 47th annual meeting in Niamey, the capital city of Niger in central Africa, the OIC’s Council of Foreign Ministers, issued a statement on J&K, provoking a strong response from India.

The OIC’s statements on J&K are issued at the instigation of Pakistan, whenever it has a high-level meeting.

Most member countries want to avoid any bruising argument and do not object, since they know that such statements have no substantive impact. This time, J&K was not even included on the agenda which riled Pakistan, and it worked overtime to beg and plead with Saudi Arabia and others to get the statement out of the OIC.

India has always rejected such statements and this time too it has castigated the OIC, for having no locus standi in India’s internal matters.

The Indian statement blamed the OIC for making unwarranted references and asserted that J&K remains an integral and inalienable part of India. Referring obliquely to Pakistan, India’s statement said that the OIC is being used by a country “which has an abominable record on religious tolerance, radicalism and persecution of minorities” and said that the organisation should refrain from making such references in future. India has also lambasted Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) held this week and hosted by India.

Of late, Pakistan has been struggling to attack India on the issue of J&K in international fora, a policy it has pursued for decades. Pakistan has redoubled its efforts after the revocation of Article 370. At the UN, Pakistan, backed by China, has failed to move the UNSC and has been shouting hoarse on violation of human rights of Kashmiris. At the OIC foreign minister’s meeting in Abu Dhabi in 2019, India’s External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj was invited as a guest of honour, leading to much frustration in Pakistan and a boycott of the plenary session by the Pakistani foreign minister, where Swaraj delivered her address. Pakistan had tried its best to get Swaraj disinvited but failed to do so.

While the OIC’s statements on J&K are treated as a ritual and to satisfy Pakistan, India’s bilateral ties with OIC countries are never affected, barring Malaysia and Turkey which have been vocal in supporting Pakistan.

Former Malaysian PM Mahathir Muhammad had made some egregious remarks against India on J&K. This led to India retaliating by reducing palm oil imports from Malaysia. Mahathir was ousted thereafter and Malaysia has not spoken out again in the same vein. India’s ties with Saudi Arabia and UAE, two leading countries of the OIC have improved under PM Narendra Modi’s leadership, as have ties with Bangladesh and Maldives. Ties with other Islamic countries have not been affected. Most of these countries have skirted the J&K issue.

Pakistan’s frustration on the issue of J&K not getting any traction internationally has been mounting. This led to an attempted alignment with Iran, Malaysia and Turkey, to upstage Saudi Arabia and UAE in the OIC.

The Pakistani FM shot his mouth off by warning that if the OIC did not show enough activism on J&K, Pakistan would be forced to form a separate Islamic platform outside the OIC.

This was a direct challenge to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan paid the price of having its loan recalled and its army chief’s mission to mend ties, resulting in his being roundly snubbed, as he failed to get a meeting with the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman.

The OIC resolution will have no effect on India’s ties with Islamic countries.

The establishment of formal ties between Israel, UAE and Bahrain and a recent clandestine visit to Saudi Arabia by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu are indicators of changing geo-political trends in West Asia. The downslide in Pakistan’s ties with UAE is manifested in the latter’s visa ban on Pakistan. Both Saudi Arabia and UAE host millions of Pakistani workers and if the axe were to fall on them, Pakistan will suffer, at a time when its economy is struggling.

For the moment, a beleaguered Pakistan and the government of PM Imran Khan, facing a combined opposition onslaught on the domestic front, will shout from the rooftops that the OIC resolution is a great victory for Pakistan.

For India, it will not cause any strain in her ties with OIC countries which have repeatedly conveyed that bilateral ties are independent of OIC resolutions on J&K.

At best, this so-called ‘victory’ proclaimed by Pakistan will mute domestic opposition but will go down as another Pyrrhic victory, meeting its inevitable end, as the world moves on.

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Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty is a former Ambassador and Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs; he is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own.

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/oic-islamic-countries-statement-on-jammu-kashmir-india-bilateral-ties-pakistan-role-uae-israel-diplomacy

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Tightrope Walk In The Gulf

By Shyam Saran

Dec 02, 2020

Not long ago, Indian foreign policy was credited with successfully navigating the multiple contestations in the Gulf and West Asia by maintaining positive engagement with all key actors in the region, in particular Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran. This was no mean feat considering the rising level of confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran and Israel and Iran. The US posture towards the region was another complicating factor. Washington abandoned even the pretence of playing honest broker on the Israel-Palestine issue and ratcheted up pressures on Iran. Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that while maintaining the rhetoric of friendship and collaboration with Iran, India has had to dilute its level of engagement with the country. Running with the hares and hunting with the hounds can only take you so far and no further. Iran is no longer a key supplier of oil and gas to India. The strategically important Chabahar port project has faced repeated delays, both from US sanctions as well as roadblocks on the Iranian side. It has also been reported that Iran will no longer invite Indian participation in the rail project linking Chabahar with Central Asia to the north. China with its Belt and Road project and substantial resources is now in pole position as far as these proposed infrastructure projects in Iran are concerned. And now the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on November 20 in a terror attack, which is suspected to have been carried out by Israeli intelligence, raises the risk of a more general conflagration in an already tense and troubled region. Whatever gains India may have made with its deft tactical and transactional manouevres so far could well run aground. Iran will watch for India's reactions. When the US carried out the assassination of Qassim Suleiman, the head of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards in September 2019, India refrained from criticising Washington, confining itself to expressing the hope that all sides concerned would exercise restraint. This would not have sounded reassuring at all in Tehran. No comment has been made by a government spokesman on the latest incident. There should be condemnation since this is clearly a terror attack and India has itself called for zero tolerance on terrorism. Otherwise its outrage over terrorism would be seen as selective.

India must condemn the killing of Iran’s nuclear scientist since it is a terror attack. Otherwise, its outrage over terrorism would be seen as selective.

This is not the first time that Iranian nuclear scientists have been targeted. Between 2010 and 2015, four scientists were assassinated and there have been more than oblique hints that Israel was behind them. On this occasion, too, Israeli intelligence is suspected to be the perpetrator. The timing and motivation are clear. Incoming US President Biden has announced his intention of reviving the nuclear deal concluded in 2015 between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany and the European Union.

President Trump walked out of the deal in 2017 and reinstated sanctions against Iran. Iran has retaliated by resuming uranium enrichment beyond the threshold allowed under the agreement. Biden has said he would be willing to take the US back into the agreement if Iran strictly observes its commitments under it. This would be anathema to Israel and Saudi Arabia who had welcomed Trump's repudiation of the deal. The assassination of Fakhrizadeh and possible Iranian armed retaliation would make it impossible for Biden to follow through on his intention. If Iran exercises restraint despite the attack, then there are still nearly two months left for further hostile acts against Iran. With Iranian elections due in June, the call for revenge attacks against Israel and Saudi Arabia would probably become irresistible. It has been reported that just days before the attack, Israeli PM Netanyahu travelled to Saudi Arabia, together with US Secretary of State Pompeo for an unprecedented meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The assassination of Fakhrizadeh may well have been offered as proof of Israel's value as a de facto ally of the kingdom against its chief adversary Iran. This is a dangerous game which could unleash a destructive action-reaction process which could get out of hand. This would severely damage India's substantial interests on its western flank, in terms of energy security, the safety and well-being of its 6 million citizens living and working in the Gulf and the possible fallout in India itself of a deepening Shia-Sunni conflict. Let us not forget that India has the largest number of Shias after Iran.

It is in India's interest to see the Iran nuclear deal revived and implemented because this would open up prospects of closer India-Iran partnership in the energy sector, energise cooperation in building infrastructure in Iran that would open up an alternative and efficient route into Afghanistan and Central Asia and help India in managing an acutely adversarial Pakistan and a resurgent Taliban. This is a strategic interest which tactical considerations must not be allowed to undermine.

While Indian engagement with Iran has been diminishing, China’s profile has been expanding. It has continued buying Iranian oil and at discounted rates. It has emerged as a major weapons supplier to Iran despite its parallel and growing relationship with other Gulf countries and Israel. A China whose power is entrenched both in Pakistan and Iran is a disturbing prospect. In recalibrating our next series of moves on our western flanks, these important considerations must be kept in mind.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/tightrope-walk-in-the-gulf-178704

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Israel’s Sabotage Hasn’t Destroyed Iran’s Nuclear Programme, But Has Set It Back

By Eli Lake

1 December, 2020

When asked when the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan might end, retired General David Petraeus would deploy a useful quip. “The enemy gets a vote,” he would say, meaning that both sides need to agree to stop fighting.

There is a corollary to Petraeus’s adage that is relevant not to war but to peace agreements: The allies get a vote, too. In the context of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, the allies include Israel, which was not a party to the deal but is almost certainly responsible for last weekend’s assassination of Iran’s top nuclear weapons scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Israel has repeatedly declined comment on the Fakrhizadeh operation, which comes after a string of Israeli sabotage actions over the summer against some of Iran’s most sensitive nuclear sites. Earlier this month, it was reported that Israeli teams killed al-Qaeda’s deputy outside of Tehran. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced to the world that Israeli operatives had stolen reams of detailed Iranian schematics and plans for building a nuclear weapon in 2018, he urged the audience to remember Fakhrizadeh’s name, revealing a memo from the late scientist describing covert nuclear activities.

Since the news broke of the assassination, the European Union as well as several former officials of the Barack Obama administration have issued condemnations. Former CIA director John Brennan, for example, mused that if a foreign country was responsible, it would be “an act of state-sponsored terrorism.”

That’s myopic. To start, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to Israel and Gulf Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates. It’s not that Iran would launch a first strike against one of these nations. Rather, it’s that all of Iran’s other destabilizing actions — supporting terrorists, arming regional insurgents, building up a long-range missile capability — would be much harder to deter if Iran possessed an atomic weapon.

In this sense, it’s mistaken to view Israel’s likely strike against Fakhrizadeh through the lens of its effect on President-elect Joe Biden’s goal of re-entering the Iran nuclear deal and negotiating a stronger follow-on agreement. Israel has already proved it has extraordinary intelligence capabilities inside Iran. But the opportunity to take out a high-value target such as Fakhrizadeh does not come along often. It’s more likely that the opportunity presented itself and Israel pounced.

More important, Israel has showed in the last three years that it is willing to use its intelligence capabilities to stymie Iran’s nuclear program. Israel killed some nuclear scientists inside Iran during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Back then, most observers believed that Israel’s only chance to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was an overt action, such as a missile strike, drone attack or bombing run. The explosions at Iranian sites over the summer suggest Israel can accomplish much of this task through intelligence operations.

The upshot is that any future deal with Iran will have to address Israel’s security needs. That is not what happened five years ago. The tensions of the nuclear deal became so dramatic that in 2015, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress to make the case against the deal Obama was negotiating. Netanyahu was willing to risk Israel’s most important alliance to oppose a deal that he believed imperiled his country’s future. So it’s highly unlikely that Israel would be willing to end its activities in Iran so the U.S. can rejoin that same deeply flawed nuclear agreement.

Israel may agree not to launch any strikes for a time, such as the first few months of the Biden administration. But it won’t give up the capability to strike inside Iran unless Iran agrees to abandon the aspects of its nuclear program suitable for building bombs. If Biden is smart, he will use this dynamic to his advantage as he tests Iran’s willingness to negotiate.

Israel’s sabotage and assassinations have not destroyed Iran’s nuclear program. But they have set it back. As the architect of that program, Fakhrizadeh will be hard to replace. What will be even harder for the regime, however, is persuading its other scientists that they will be safe if they continue the quest for a nuclear weapon. – Bloomberg

https://theprint.in/opinion/israels-sabotage-hasnt-destroyed-irans-nuclear-programme-but-has-set-it-back/555317/

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Top Iranian Nuclear Scientist’s Assassination & How It Will Impact US Diplomacy In Middle East

The Print Team

1 December, 2020

New Delhi: Iran’s senior-most nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran last Friday. Despite the scientist’s heavy security detail, attackers “used electronic equipment” to fire at his car and kill him.

“This is not just an isolated event or an act of revenge. This is a political move on a really deadly, global strategic chessboard,” said ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta in episode 629 of Cut The Clutter.

In his first remarks on the assassination, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said, “The enemies are experiencing stressful weeks… They are mindful that the global situation is changing, and are trying to make the most of these days to create unstable conditions in the region.”

Gupta said Rouhani was insinuating that Israel is in “cahoots” with the Donald Trump administration in the United States to create a situation that will elicit a retaliation from Iran and thereby leave behind a crisis for President-elect Joe Biden when he takes office in January next year.

Unlike Trump, Biden is committed to returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a US-Iran agreement signed during former president Barack Obama’s time to try and contain Iran’s nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions, said Gupta.

he agreement became operational on 16 January 2016, less than 96 hours before Obama officially ceased to be president, and Trump took over, said Gupta. But it was a deal “dead on arrival” as Trump had already taken a strong position that viewed Iran as “the great Satan”.

For India, its nuanced relationship with Iran, be it economic, political or strategic, has been held at ransom ever since Trump’s withdrawal from JCPOA, remarked Gupta. If Biden resumes negotiations with Iran, it will ease up issues like the Chabahar Port and have a similar effect on countries around India like Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said.

Fakhrizadeh’s death part of a series of assassinations

Fakhrizadeh’s death is part of a series of targeted assassinations, said Gupta. Between 2010 and 2012, four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated and the country has accused Israel of playing a role in the killings. This also comes nearly a year after the US assassinated top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

On 7 August, al Qaeda’s second-highest leader, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah or Abu Muhammad al-Masri, thought to be the mastermind behind the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa, was gunned down while on a walk with his daughter in Tehran. Iran did not speak out about it as it not only brought shame to Iran’s security and intelligence, but also because it was “political embarrassment” for a Shia nation to harbour a terrorist from a Sunni organisation, explained Gupta.

Then again, Iran and al Qaeda have shared an “old connection”, which Iran “does not want to admit to”, said Gupta, citing Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark’s book ‘The Exile’.

Former Central Intelligence Agency chief John O. Brennan called Fakhrizadeh’s death “a criminal act” and implied that this could lead to retaliation that would hurt US diplomacy in the Middle East.

Former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, during Obama’s tenure, also said the assassination was aimed at undermining diplomacy between the Biden administration and Iran. However, Brennan and Rhodes’ remarks provoked criticism from Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Also, political scientist Ian Bremmer reminded Brennan that four nuclear scientists were assassinated in Iran while he was running the CIA.

Biden presidency will majorly affect Middle East

With Biden as the new US President-elect, every part of the world is expecting changes in US foreign policy, but nobody will be more affected by this change than the Middle East, said Gupta.

Going country by country, Gupta explained that Turkey, an estranged NATO ally who “got away with a bit” under Trump, won’t be as lucky with Biden and is already trying to cement its relationship with Europe. It also must be asked if Biden will be as indifferent to Turkey’s role in Syria and Libya as Trump was, he added.

Syria is in a “complete mess”, but it will be critical to see how Biden will position himself with regard to President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who found a “complete unquestioning ally” in Trump, won’t have the same with Biden.

“If anything, [Biden] was critical of Trump for shifting the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” added Gupta. Though Biden has made it clear that he won’t shift back the embassy, he is unlikely to cut Netanyahu as much slack as Trump did, said Gupta.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations are paranoid about their “ideological rival”, Iran.

The situation in Iraq is equally complex as the country is under heavy Iranian influence and the US has troops there, Gupta said and also predicted that “respect” may return to US diplomacy in the Middle East and talks may resume.

https://theprint.in/world/top-iranian-nuclear-scientists-assassination-how-it-will-impact-us-diplomacy-in-middle-east/555063/

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BJP’s ‘Battle’ for Hyderabad: Here’s Why Local Muslims Are Anxious

By Kingshuk Nag

02 Dec 2020

When voting ended for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) on Tuesday, 1 December, common citizens heaved a sigh of relief. Reason: the locals feel COVID was intensifying due to the high decibel campaigning by all parties, and it would have been better if there were no polls.

The campaigning saw top BJP leaders led by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP National President JP Nadda fighting for – what seemed – the soul of Hyderabad. Opposing them was the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) which has ruled Telangana ever since it became a state in 2014, and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) that represents Muslims. Muslims comprise 40 percent of Hyderabad’s population.

Although BJP had started its campaign by focusing on the ‘misrule’ of the TRS, matters acquired a sharp edge when the saffron party began focusing on the Bhagyalakshmi temple. This temple, standing at the edge of the Charminar, is supposed to have preceded the latter – but this is disputed by many. Though Amit Shah did not say so, his colleague, UP Chief Minister Adityanath (who came campaigning), wanted to rename the city as Bhagyanagar. This is supposedly the ‘original’ name for Hyderabad, and whose ruling deity is Bhagyalakshmi. The campaign, however, left Hyderabad’s Muslims somewhat nervous.

This was BJP’s first foray – in a real sense – in Telangana, even though Amit Shah has been periodically making trips to Hyderabad. Ironically, BJP’s zealous entry into Telangana coincides with the ‘collapse’ of the Congress party nationally.

The Congress used to be a force in Telangana earlier. When Telangana became a state in June 2014, it happened due to the decision of Congress boss Sonia Gandhi, whose party was aligned with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) at that time. But once Telangana became a reality, TRS boss K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), who used to touch the feet of Sonia and call her ‘Amma’, dis-aligned from her. TRS fought the elections on its own, and won and established the state government.

Over the years it gradually destroyed the Congress party and other Opposition such that it won the 2019 elections as well. Of course this was also due to the munificence of voters who saw in TRS a party which swore by Telangana.

TRS’s Declining Popularity Is BJP’s Gain

The voters, however, realised that over the years, the TRS ruling establishment became feudal, with the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, promoting his son K Taraka Ramarao (KTR) as his successor. KCR also converted the chief minister’s official bungalow into a palatial building and did not operate from the secretariat.

However, the state secretariat has been demolished to make way for a new building. All this has led to the loss of popularity for the TRS which has now been in power for six years.

It is this loss that BJP now wants to capitalise on. At the beginning of the campaign, some BJP worthies (who do not want to be named) had told this writer that the saffron party’s aim was to mark its presence in Hyderabad in the municipal polls, so that the party could give TRS a run for its money in the next assembly elections slated for 2024.

But with the BJP now expected to perform better than what it seemed to at the beginning of the campaigning, a shrill voice from the saffron party is also demanding that the TRS government be dismissed.

Hyderabad’s History – And Why the ‘Battle’ for the City Will Be Interesting

Because of Hyderabad’s history, the battle for the city will be interesting: Hyderabad’s Muslim population – at 40 percent – is larger than any of the metros in the country, and this has happened due to the fact that the city and the princely state (also called Hyderabad) was under the Nizam’s rule from the very beginning.

When India became independent, the Nizam toyed with the idea of joining Pakistan. But he was forced to join India in September 1948 after what is called Police Action (but was actually Military Action) that saw the Indian Army zeroing in on Hyderabad from all sides.

Over a period of few years, Hyderabad state was also dismantled: and the Marathi speaking areas (that extended to Aurangabad) and the Kannada-speaking areas (including sizeable parts of Karnataka now) were de-merged.

In place of these demerged areas came Andhra that was the Telugu-speaking area of the earlier Madras Presidency (established by the British). Andhra and the Hyderabad state (which was also Telugu speaking) were then merged to form Andhra Pradesh.

Will the Coming Months See Tension Between AIMIM & BJP?

In this process of demerger and merger, the Muslims were left without an anchor. Many of them crossed over to Pakistan and others to Canada, USA and other countries. Left behind were the less fortunate Muslims (most of them concentrated in Hyderabad city and that too in the old city). The AIMIM represents them politically. The party has now become politically ambitious, and contested the recent polls in Bihar (and earlier fought in Maharashtra). But AIMIM is now feeling the heat in Hyderabad with the BJP’s entry.

AIMIM was earlier in tacit alliance with the Congress and then with the TRS. But in the municipal polls, the TRS started attacking the AIMIM saying that it had nothing to do with them.

This was with the idea of saving itself from BJP’s attack. In the coming months, even as the BJP ups the ante for the next assembly polls, analysts perceive that the conflict between AIMIM and BJP will intensify. This is scaring the locals with the prospects of communal trouble.

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Kingshuk Nag is the former Resident Editor of the Ahmedabad and later Hyderabad editions of the Times of India. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own.

The New Age Islam neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/hyderabad-ghmc-polls-bjp-hindutva-bhagyanagar-trs-aimim-muslims-communal-tension

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