By New Age Islam Edit
Bureau
24 October
2020
• Populism, Islamophobia And What This Means For
Muslims In Europe?
By Ambreen Yousuf
• Recall Frontier Gandhi
By JS Rajput
• Adityanath Always Flaunted His Bigotry, Now
His War On Minorities Is In Full Swing
By Harsh Mander and Amitanshu Verma
• An Exaggerated Clampdown
By Gwynne Dyer
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Populism, Islamophobia And What This Means For
Muslims In Europe?
By Ambreen Yousuf
October 24,
2020
“From
the street to state, Islamophobia is baked into European political life”
Narzanin Massoumi
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“From the
street to state, Islamophobia is baked into European political life” Narzanin
Massoumi
The
recent body literature of Muslims in Europe suggests that they are persistently
being ‘censored’. Is it so? One cannot deny the fact that in the aftermath of
the 9/11 attacks, a larger proportion of Muslims underwent stigmatization of
different sorts given to their ‘identity’. This didn’t stop here. Instead, this
has taken ‘considerable roots’, manifesting in different forms which we broadly
refer to as Islamophobia.
Muslims are
demonized on daily basis, brazenly criticized, reckoned as ‘enemies’, and
subject to suspicion. The violent attacks on Muslims in many European countries
have deepened. Austria alone has witnessed 74% upsurge in Islamophobic attacks
from the past few years. In 2018, Austria shutdown 7 mosques. In the same year,
Austria and Italy both expelled Islamic preachers from their soil, 6 Imams were
expelled from Austria and 16 were expelled from Italy. Expulsion of religious
preachers (Imams) and scrutinizing religious institutions are done to stop the
diffusion of ‘violent Islam’. To curb the so-called Islamisation, both Germany
and France commenced to educate local Imams at home. They also launched pilot
projects and certification programs for these imams so that they will teach
specific version of Islam, which will not jeopardise these nations.
After
Christianity, Islam is the second widely followed religion in France. The
French constitution does not consider religion above the state and contemplates
itself as ‘laicite’ or secular country. Laicite is the central and defining
principle of the French national identity. According to French President
Immanuel Macron, “secularism is the cement of a united France”. Equality of
citizens before law irrespective of race, origin or religion is also one of its
basic principles. However, the banning of the veil or burka and other religious
or cultural symbols, banning of building mosques with minarets manifests denial
of the right of equality of its minorities.
After 2015
Charlie Hebdo attacks, France has been on the high alert regarding ‘Islamism’.
From 2018, there has been 52% rise in Islamophobic incidents. In 2010, the
French government completely banned women from wearing a burka or covering face
at public places. There is a surge in incidents of Muslims being labelled as
terrorists and this ‘culture of stigmatization’ gets reinforced in a society,
when political leaders issue anti-Muslim statements. For instance, French
opposition leader Marine le Pen compared Muslims praying in streets to Nazi
occupation. Whatever be the underlying purpose of this outrageous statement,
one cannot deny the fact that such communication is driven with a purpose of
‘normalizing hatred’ against a community, which has somewhat become the order
of the day. Incidents like stereotyping, online trolling, malicious campaigns,
and other violent attacks have brought Europe to a tipping point. Besides this,
European Muslims are encountering numerous challenges of exclusionist policies,
poverty, restricted freedom of religion, unemployment, physical attacks on
property and places of worship, and other social and political discriminations
which are often trivialized.
Recently,
speaking at Les Mureaux, President Macron said, “Islam is a religion that is in
crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country”.
He vowed to eradicate the influence of Islamism from public institutions. For
this, Macron has devised a new proposal to combat what he calls ‘Islamic separatism’.
To counter radical/extremist elements, the government will keep check on
foreign religious funding, scrutinize religious institutions and limit
home-schooling. Macron’s proposal to counter radicalization will certainly set
a new templet with its snowballing effects across the European continent. The
idea seems to support a new version of Islam, which would be compatible with
French republican values and to unleash a war of French government against so
called radical or extremist Islam, within its boundaries. ‘Islam of France’ as Macron puts it
Internally,
Europe is battling economic challenges, gender issues, a rise in racism,
cybercrime, and an unprecedented climatic challenge. But politicians have intentionally shifted focus on Islamism
to advance their agendas. Islamophobic movements and political parties
promoting anti-Muslim agendas have gained popular support as well as political
mileage. For this reason, Islamophobic discourse has well absorbed by European
society. Thus, Macron’s recent speech attempting to ‘reorganize Islam’ in
France is part of his election manifesto. Border crossing of refugees and
excessive immigration has not only destabilized the national identity but also
exacerbating the public rage.
European
countries have adopted various policies varying extensively from each other.
Both France and Germany have adopted policies like multiculturalism and
assimilation to integrate its minorities. The French model of assimilation has
completely failed because it cannot cope up with the diversity and diverse
identities with the republic. Thus, minorities are losing their ‘Muslim
identity’ under the garb of assimilation. Countering separatist elements, the
French government continues to undermine the religious identity of its
minorities. which justifies the fact that religious values cannot be above the
French values.
The
authorities should deal with the culture of stigmatization with respect to
minorities in Europe and in particular to Muslims sternly. The broader approach
of European countries with respect to religion of Islam should consider Islam’s
sensitivities and the government’s hard approach in itself should not become a
galvanizing force for religiously inspired violence. At the global stage, there
is a need to bridge the chasm between Islam and West, which are wittingly or
unwittingly propelling unending violence, which manifests in different forms as
has been the recent case of beheading of a teacher in Paris.
----
Ambreen Yousuf is a Doctoral Candidate at Jamia
Millia Islamia University, New Delhi.
https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/populism-islamophobia-and-what-this-means-for-muslims-in-europe/
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Recall Frontier Gandhi
By JS Rajput
24 October
2020
Khan
Abdul Ghaffar Khan was a rare example of community transition, who showed how
easy it was to shed the cult of violence and walk the path of peace
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Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan was a rare example of community transition, who showed how easy it
was to shed the cult of violence and walk the path of peace
India
completed the year-long celebrations of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma
Gandhi on October 2. One had the privilege of participating in several learned
deliberations on the relevance of Gandhian ideas in the present context. In
most of these, it was rather a unanimous conclusion that Gandhi’s principles,
values and his life could give a healing touch to suffering humanity in a world
characterised by wars, violence, distrust, hatred, fundamentalism, terrorism,
arms race, hunger, poverty, ill-health and much more. Peace, non-violence and
religious harmony remain elusive commodities. And Gandhi successfully
demonstrated a non-violent path to human dignity, harmony and liberty. He could
influence leading personalities within and beyond India, who plunged headlong into
creating a peaceful world by following his values and successfully achieving
attitudinal transformation within their communities and nation.
The life of
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan and Frontier Gandhi, presents
one of the most scintillating examples of achieving a rare community transition
from violence as a cult to the path of peace and love as the value of total
commitment. His name may appear just as unfamiliar to most young Indians as his
role as a stalwart in the Indian freedom struggle, and after Independence, as a
fighter for his people in Pakistan, that he waged till his last breath on
January 20, 1988. He finds little resonance even in India for various reasons.
In July
1942, Jawaharlal Nehru issued a statement on the happenings in the Frontier
Province — now in Pakistan — clearly indicating how scarce the news from there
was, and that too, was “often tainted and contained many wrong allegations.”
Nehru had personally experienced difficulty, during his own visits to the Frontier
Province, in sending out proper news through normal agencies or otherwise. He
further observed that restrictions on such news being sent out were stricter in
the Frontier Province than elsewhere in India. He then revealed a painful
truth: “The result is that the people in the rest of India know little of what
is happening in this highly important part of the country.” In this very
statement, Nehru wrote about Frontier Gandhi. He said: “Few people know about
the work that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan has been carrying on during the last six
months. He does not believe in ostentation but he has gone to villages seeing
his people, organising them and encouraging them in every way. Thus, he has
covered the entire province.”
Apart from
numerous impediments from various quarters, Khan also had to face false
propaganda of vested interests. Born in 1890, he was greatly touched by the
devastating misery of his own people which, he concluded, was due to the lack
of education and consequent ignorance. He started schools and the British did
not like it. He was 19 when he was first imprisoned and then it was a life in
and out of jails of the Britishers, and then the Government of Pakistan. His
historic movement, Khudai Khidmatgar, was launched to overcome poverty and banish
the British from India. He was, till the end of the freedom struggle, for a
united India.
Khan was
inspired by Gandhi’s message of non-violence and he knew how difficult it would
be to convince his “freedom-loving” Pathans to execute the idea. He had the courage
and conviction to accept the challenge and he achieved this miracle. The type
of attitudinal transformation achieved by this charismatic personality could
only be termed unparalleled. He gave a new interpretation of force, courage and
valour to his people and the community. This, he could do through his creative
leadership, deep and thoughtful interpretation of Islam as a religion of peace.
He was a man with a universal message of brotherhood and camaraderie. He knew
how vibrant the cultural heritage of his people and the region was, and how
this cradle of learning and culture sank “into a state where there was no room
left for such good work such as education and learning.”
While India
was celebrating the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, an erudite scholar of
post-Independence history, RNP Singh, was searching literature and sources in
libraries and institutions to put up an authentic account of the great
Gandhian, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. And
how India ignored his contributions which had the potential to bring forth
peace not only to the erstwhile North-West Frontier Province (NWFP),
Afghanistan and Baluchistan but to the entire Middle East region, and even
beyond.
Singh has
established, based on his study, how great was the measure of wrong done to
this frontline freedom fighter and an exceptional devotee of Gandhi. In his
seminal work, Durand line: Did India Fail Frontier Gandhi, Singh very
succinctly summarises: “He was among the very few leaders of undivided India
who, by dint of their sincere effort and selfless service to their people, rose
to eminence and earned a niche for themselves in the top political hierarchy of
the country. Yet in spite of having earned a place among the galaxy of eminent
leaders, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan never advanced his claims to recognition in
the Indian context.” One could say without hesitation that India failed Bacha
Khan, his Pakhtoon people and the NWFP. There is no other way out of this but
to follow the path shown by Gandhi and Bacha Khan.
During the
freedom struggle, Gandhi tried his best to persuade the Muslim League and
Mohammad Ali Jinnah to give up the two-nation theory. He failed in his
persuasion and India suffered the ghastly tragedy of the Partition. And we
still need persistent efforts to strengthen our efforts to cement the age-old
mutual harmony between the two major communities.
Inspired by
the increasing influence of Gandhi, whose persona and ideas had begun to
influence the remote North-Western part of the empire and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,
young Bacha Khan opened schools for both boys and girls. He organised young
people under the banner of servants of God — Khudai Khidmatgar — who, contrary
to the prevalent tradition, decided to follow the Gandhian path to achieve
freedom for India and its people. To these highly motivated and committed
people, his message was, “The fundamental principles of all religions are the
same though the details differ because each faith takes the colour and flavour
of the soil from which it springs… I cannot contemplate a time when there will
be one religion for the whole world.” And this came from a devout Muslim who
never missed a namaaz and who also had “the spirit of brotherhood” innate in
himself more than many so-called orthodox Muslims.
Religious
fundamentalists and protagonists of the two-nation theory, expectedly, disliked
him and his approach and inflicted numerous cruelties on him and his followers
once they came to power. The persona of this Frontier Gandhi, sufferings that
he endured even after Independence, must be revealed to young Indians, who are
working for religious amity as the core value that could lead India to its
destination of honour and acceptability in a strife-torn world.
What
happened to Bacha Khan or what was done to him is summed up by Mohammed Arif
Khan in the foreword to the treatise by Singh: “As an Indian, I feel that what
we did to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Pashtuns in 1957 was very unfair. The
Pashtuns had voted in 1946 for a united India but the decision of the Indian
leadership reduced them to being subservient to the breakers of Indian unity.
The result was that Khan and his followers were treated as traitors and he
spent more time in jails of Pakistan after 1947 than in British jails before
1947.” All this happened in spite of the fact that the top Indian leadership of
the freedom struggle was fully aware of the significance of Bacha Khan’s
contribution and his unflinching commitment to a united India. Sadly enough,
India was divided. Even Gandhi, who had declared that Partition could take
place only over his dead body, accepted it. All that the great Bacha Khan could
say to the Indian leadership that had accepted the Partition of this great
country was: “You have thrown us to wolves.” He and his people were left at the
mercy of those who never liked him for his liberal stance on Indian culture,
history and his progressive ideas about religious harmony and social cohesion.
-----
JS Rajput works in education and social
cohesion
https://www.dailypioneer.com/2020/columnists/recall-frontier-gandhi.html
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Adityanath Always Flaunted His Bigotry, Now His
War on Minorities Is in Full Swing
By Harsh Mander and
Amitanshu Verma
24 October
2020
UP CM
Adityanath in Lucknow. Photo: PTI
------
What is
going on in Uttar Pradesh? The constitution of India, at least in principle,
still applies to the state. No emergency has been imposed.
Yet its
saffron-clad chief minister, with his career of toxic runaway hate mobilisation
including raising a Hindu youth militia, is running the state like a Hindu
Rashtra, reducing the constitution of India to a dead letter.
Running
parallel to his open war against Muslims is a subterranean current of
lower-caste intimidation and terror facilitated by his administration. Weeks
after Adityanath became chief minister; Thakurs of his Rajput caste torched 50
Dalit homes to punish them for erecting a statue of Ambedkar in Saharanpur.
The recent
brutal gang-rape and murder of a 19-year old Dalit girl in Hathras stirred the
conscience of the nation not just for the numbing savagery of the attack, but
because of the administration’s brazen bid to protect the alleged perpetrators
of the Thakur caste and to shamefully crush the girl’s family.
Adityanath
is a leader who flaunts his bigotry like a badge of honour. Never one to
disguise his hatred for Indian Muslims, one of his first decisions after
entering office was to crack down on the meat trade by closing ‘illegal’
slaughterhouses. His objective was to annihilate the livelihoods of poor
Muslims engaged in the trade; he was indifferent to the collateral damage of
lakhs of Dalits who also suffered gravely.
His
speeches, animated with Islamophobia continue unabated, as does his
weaponisation of law and the police for overtly majoritarian political ends.
During the lockdown, several districts imposed a ‘ban’ on azaan, the Islamic
call to prayer, which was later overturned by the Allahabad high court.
Tablighi Jamaat members were quarantined for no scientific reason well beyond
the prescribed 14 days, for several months, and many jailed.
After the
bhoomi poojan at the foundation ceremony in Ayodhya, the chief minister made
clear that as ‘a Yogi’ and ‘a Hindu’ he would not join the foundation-stone
laying of the mosque whose construction was ordered by the Supreme Court on the
other side of the river. He renamed the Mughal Museum in Agra, designed
originally to celebrate the architectural achievements of the Mughal era, as
the Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum. He asked, ‘ How can our heroes be Mughals?.’
The
National Security Act empowers the government to jail a person for 12 months
without an FIR to prevent him or her from acts prejudicial to national security
and public order. 139 NSA cases were lodged by the UP police under Adityanath.
While the chief secretary did not supply a breakdown by religion, reports have
shown that under the Adityanath regime, it is predominantly Muslims against
whom the NSA has been invoked. Seventy-six of those are imprisoned for cow
slaughter. It is difficult to understand how anyone, who the government claims
was involved in beef trade, could qualify for detention under this harsh law
created to defend the country’s security.
Peaceful
anti-CAA protests, which erupted all over the country in December last year,
were met with the most violent police crackdown in Uttar Pradesh. The state
imposed Section 144 in all districts rendering unlawful all street protests and
invoked this to unleash brutal violence on peaceful protestors. Thousands were
arrested and detained.
Hundreds of
ordinary Muslims said that the police attacked them with batons, bullets,
vandalising their homes, looting money and desecrating mosques. Twenty-three
people were killed in the police crackdown – all Muslims – among whom 21 died
of bullet injuries. Minor Muslim boys
were arrested and released after months. The violence unleashed upon Muslims
and protestors was celebrated by the chief minister as successful and resolute.
Adityanath
openly declared that he would extract ‘revenge’ from the protestors for damage
to public property. The administration in many districts then served notices to
protestors for such alleged damages even before their guilt was established in
courts of law.
In Lucknow
alone, the UP government proceeded to recover 1.5 crore rupees from the
protestors, mostly working-class and poor Muslims and some respected human
rights defenders. The district administration started attaching properties of
protestors. In early March, in Lucknow, hoardings appeared of protestors ostensibly
to officially ‘shame’ them in public, even though peaceful protests are legal.
No court had found them guilty of any crime. The UP government even defied
orders of the high court, refusing for long to remove the posters. Activists and protesters including women were
detained, manhandled and thrashed by the UP police.
From
criminalising to effectively crushing, with brute force, the democratic
anti-CAA protests, it is evident that the Adityanath administration provided
the template that has since become a model for the Delhi Police, controlled by
the Union home ministry. TheDelhiPolice criminalises the peaceful democratic
protests as a sinister conspiracy to wage a terrorist insurrection. And now,
after the Hathras outrage, UP applied the Delhi model on steroids,
criminalising not only the Dalit woman’s family, but bizarrely, also protestors
and journalists, linked to protests against the CAA and farmers’ bills, all
part of an ‘international conspiracy‘!
How far the
chief minister has travelled from the constitution is reflected also in his
orders to officials to investigate into and prevent cases of ‘love jihad’, a
poisonous Hindutva construction alleging ‘conspiracies’ by Muslim men to marry
Hindu women and force them later to convert to Islam. With this, the line
between Adityanath as a hate ideologue and the constitutional head of a
government of all residents of Uttar Pradesh, including Muslims and Dalits
residing in the state, has been completely erased. And for the police to
consent without demur to investigate consensual adult relationships between
people of different faiths marks their effective and willing merger into the
chief minister’s Hindu militia.
What is
ominous for the future of the Indian republic is the ease with the chief
minister has transgressed dangerously, with impunity and cavalier defiance, the
many boundaries laid down by the constitution. The Allahabad high court has
alone on occasion offered some resistance. Most other institutions of the
republic – the legislature, the police, the lower courts and most of the media
– have fallen in line with the chief minister’s rampage.
Uttar
Pradesh under Adityanath has opened a terrifying window into what India will
become – and that also in the not too distant future – if the present rulers
have their way in transforming all of India into a Hindu Rashtra.
-----
Harsh Mander is a social worker and writer.
Amitanshu Verma works at Karwan-e-Mohabbat. His interests lie at the
intersection of political economy, Indian politics and equity.
https://thewire.in/rights/uttar-pradesh-yogi-aditynath-hindu-rashtra
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An Exaggerated Clampdown
By Gwynne Dyer
24 October
2020
The youth
in the streets of Lagos may not realise that their rebellion could endanger a
corrupt system, but those who benefit from it certainly do
The young
Nigerians who were protesting at Lekki Toll Plaza in Lagos recently were not
the African touring company of Les Misérables. Lekki is one of the poshest
suburbs of Lagos, full of gated communities and most of the protesters were
literate, media-savvy youths who reeked of urban cool. The army killed them
anyway. Or maybe it killed them precisely because of who they were.
IZZY@theleventh, who does not explicitly say he was there, tweeted: “They
removed the cameras two hours before, turned off the street light and the LED
billboard and deployed soldiers to open fire at the crowd singing the national
anthem...they brought tanks!! Over 78 people are dead. The Nigerian Army then
began to put the dead bodies in their trucks.”
The numbers
may be exaggerated: One eyewitness told the BBC he had counted about 20 bodies
and at least 50 injured after the soldiers opened fire. Official sources have
denied that anybody was killed, or that the army was even there. But Channels
Television has videos showing men in Nigerian Army uniform walking calmly up to
the barricade and firing into an angry but non-violent crowd. The massacre
comes after two weeks of protests, mostly in southern Nigeria, that were
initially targeted on the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
Almost all
Nigerian police forces are corrupt and brutal, but SARS specialised in robbing,
torturing and sometimes murdering prosperous and trendy young people. If you
were young, had hair of a different colour or tattoos, and were in a flashy
car, you stood a statistically significant chance of having an unpleasant
encounter with SARS. The protests began two weeks ago after pictures allegedly
showing a man being beaten to death by SARS circulated on social media.
Muhammadu Buhari, a military dictator 35 years ago and now back at 77 as
Nigeria’s elected President, recognised the danger and acted fast. Within two
days he abolished SARS, promising it to replace it with a kinder, gentler force
— but the protesters had heard that story before, and besides they had already
moved on to broader targets.
Nigeria is
a powder keg at the best of times, and with lengthy lockdowns this is not the
best of times. Protests exploded across southern Nigeria, and not all were
non-violent. On October 19 a mob burned a police station in Yaba, another
upscale suburb of Lagos, and 120 km to the east in Benin City armed crowds
freed more than a thousand prisoners from two jails. The State claims that the
protests have been infiltrated by criminals and in some places that is clearly
true, but that’s not why the ruling political class is panicking. That’s not
why they shot down well-educated, trendy but law-abiding young people in Lekki.
It’s because those in power fear a youth revolt that could not only transform
the country, but split it in half.
Nigeria,
Africa’s most populous nation (200 million people), is really two countries.
The southern, mostly Christian half, with all the oil and ports and most of the
industry, is around 95 per cent literate. Only one of the 19 northern, mostly
Muslim States is over 50 per cent
literate, and half the young women in the northern region have no formal
education whatever. Naturally, relative prosperity shows the same disparity.
Only 27 per cent of the southerners live below the poverty line and 72 per cent
of the northerners do. Yet it is young southerners who are on the brink of
revolt, because it is the political domination of the north that keeps the
ruling kleptocracy in power.
It starts
with the army, whose officer corps has been dominated by Muslim northerners
since colonial times. That is why Muslim military dictators and elected
presidents from the north have ruled Nigeria for 38 of the 60 years since
independence, but even Christian presidential candidates from the south are in
hock to northern interests. The traditional rulers and religious authorities of
the north control the big banks of voters that can be sold to the highest
bidder, and it is in their interest to keep those voters ignorant and obedient.
The southern kleptocrats, who buy the votes, have an equally strong interest in
the system as it lets them go on stealing: One-third of Nigeria’s oil revenues
over the past 50 years have ended up in foreign bank accounts.
The young
men and women in the streets of Lagos may not realise that their rebellion
could endanger an entire corrupt system, but those who benefit from it
certainly do. Which is why their response has been so extreme. What happens
next matters a lot, because 25 years from now Nigeria will have overtaken the
US in population and become the third-biggest country in the world. It would be
nice if by then it was a stable, well-educated democracy where prosperity
extended beyond the south.
-----
Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The
Future of Democracy and Work.’
https://www.dailypioneer.com/2020/columnists/an-exaggerated-clampdown.html
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