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Middle East Press on Asaduddin Owaisi, Ennahda in Tunisia and Arab Americans: New Age Islam's Selection, 16 November 2020


By New Age Islam Edit Desk

16 November 2020

• Will Asaduddin Owaisi Be The ‘Chirag Paswan Of Bengal’?

By Sanjib Kumar Das

• The Rise And Imminent Fall Of Ennahda In Tunisia

By Dr. Hedi Ben Abbes

• How Arab Americans View Their Heritage And The Middle East

By James J. Zogby

•What Muslim Voters Want From Joe Biden

By Sarah Parvini

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Will Asaduddin Owaisi be the ‘Chirag Paswan of Bengal’?

By Sanjib Kumar Das

November 15, 2020


As the results of elections in the Indian state of Bihar started trickling in last Tuesday, a correspondent for an Indian television news channel in Patna alluded to an interesting quote while referring to the party-pooper role played to near-perfection by Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and its leader Chirag Paswan: “The first election is for us to lose; the second is for us to make sure some people lose; and the third will be the one to win”! LJP, a partner in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), won just one seat in Bihar, but managed to achieve two objectives — one by default, and the other by design.

It was LJP’s presence in the fray that accounted for the defeat of the ruling Janata Dal-United (JDU) candidates in about 39 seats, thereby dealing a severe embarrassment to JDU supremo and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, relegating his party to the third position in the overall seat tally. If that was by design, given Paswan’s animosity to Kumar, then by default, he ensured that NDA big brother BJP win a far larger number of seats than JDU — an outcome that will probably keep Kumar on tenterhooks all through his new five-year term and allow the BJP central leadership to call the shots, keeping Kumar as a figurehead CM only.

Rank Outsiders

Now talking about party-poopers, there’s one other party whose performance in the Bihar elections is quite noteworthy, and that is All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (Aimim), led by its firebrand president Asaduddin Owaisi. Aimim, considered a rank outsider in Bihar politics until the other day, not only managed to win five seats, out of the 20 it had contested, but more interestingly, it made significant inroads into the minority ‘vote bank’ of the Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the Seemanchal area, bordering the state of West Bengal, which goes to the polls in April-May 2021. And in a seemingly surprising move, almost immediately after the Bihar poll results were out, Owaisi declared that in next year’s Bengal assembly polls, his party would be fielding candidates.

Seemingly surprising because Owaisi’s Aimim has so far had a zero footprint in Bengal. However, if one considers the niche-politics played by Owaisi and his Aimim, mostly catering to the sentiments of minority Muslim voters and his carefully-calibrated messages by way of raising issues pertaining to that one particular community, then the fact that Muslim voters comprise about 30 per cent of the electorate makes Owaisi’s politics of polarisation all too relevant. And that is precisely the reason why Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has reasons to worry.

It is still early days, but there is no doubt that if Owaisi’s Aimim finds even marginal traction with the minority vote in the state, then it can turn out to be a decisive factor in about 140 of the 294 seats that will be up for grabs in the 2021 assembly polls. And should that happen, Owaisi may well turn out to be the ‘Chirag Paswan of Bengal’ — party-pooper par excellence, giving Mamata the jitters more than anyone else. There are at least four districts, namely Maldaha, North Dinajpur, Murshidabad and South 24 Parganas, accounting for a total of 74 seats, where Muslim voters have always had a say in the poll results. Owaisi has said it in as many words that Aimim will field candidates in these districts, apart from a few other areas in the state. Add another 65 seats in the mix from pockets across Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and Kolkata where the minority vote can make a difference between winning and losing and it is quite likely that the Owaisi brand of politics may help BJP in many of these seats in a highly polarised atmosphere.

Why Mamata Needs To Worry

The question that arises here is that why does Mamata have to worry about Aimim trying to make inroads into Bengal?

From the time India became independent in 1947 and until the Left parties came to power in Bengal in 1977, the minority vote had always stayed with Congress. After that, for the next 34 years of unstinted Left rule in the state, the minority Muslim vote has staunchly stayed with the Left. This trend saw a massive change during the 2008 Panchayat (local rural self-government) polls when the first signs of a decisive shift in the minority vote from the Left to TMC were noticed, and that reached a crescendo in the 2011 watershed elections in the state when the Mamata-led TMC unseated the Left Front and stormed to power, winning the lion’s share of the Muslim vote.

For the last decade or so, barring the districts of Maldaha and Murshidabad, where the Congress has by and large managed to retain its traditional support base among Muslims, the minority voters in Bengal have repeatedly reposed their faith in Mamata and the TMC for more than a decade now. One major reason behind that is the fact that apart from TMC, no other political outfit has made a serious effort to win over the confidence of the Muslim voter in the state. The Congress influence, as already stated, has traditionally remained restricted within its pocket boroughs of Maldaha and Murshidabad, while post-2011, the Left is no longer considered a credible voice of the minorities in Bengal.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, TMC had garnered an overwhelming 70 per cent of the Muslim vote in the state, winning 43.69 per cent of the total votes polled. In comparison, BJP won 18 seats, winning 40.64 per cent of the votes. Given these numbers, even a 2-3 per cent vote swing away from TMC can turn out to be disastrous for Mamata.

AIMIM And The Minority Vote

Given such a scenario, Owaisi’s forays into Bengal is likely to provide the average Muslim voter with an alternative option — other than what TMC has been propagating for so long. With Aimim winning five seats in Bihar and doing well in the Seemanchal region, despite the presence of tried and tested options like the Congress and RJD in the fray, taking AIMIM’s appeal lightly in Bengal can turn out to be disastrous, and the TMC leadership knows it only too well.

And it is not just TMC in Bengal, but the rise of AIMIM can send alarm bells ringing among many other national and regional parties including the Congress. For more than 70 years since independence, political parties that claim to be secular in India have time and again been found blatantly pandering to the minority sentiments merely as a poll plank. Treating the minority as just a vote bank without ever making a serious and sincere attempt at addressing the issues that the minorities are hamstrung with and indulging in tokenism have for long been considered par for the course.

Now with AIMIM and Owaisi trying to play the same card and ambush the gravy train of these parties in terms of the minority Muslim vote is a direct fallout of this brand of politics of opportunism. So there’s absolutely no point in trying to blame Owaisi for making forays into Bihar, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh or the rest of India. As a free citizen of the world’s largest democracy and as the leader of a political party, he and AIMIM have every right to fight elections at a time and point of their choosing. That really should be nobody’s business.

If tomorrow Owaisi turns out to be the ‘Chirag Paswan of Bengal’ and play party-pooper to TMC, don’t blame him because the template for a highly polarised political matrix was drawn up much before he jumped into the fray. And one must always remember. ‘If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind’.

https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/will-asaduddin-owaisi-be-the-chirag-paswan-of-bengal-1.75288942

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The Rise And Imminent Fall Of Ennahda In Tunisia

By Dr. Hedi Ben Abbes

November 12, 2020


Almost nine years after it re-emerged to become the dominant political force in Tunisia, Ennahda is experiencing its most significant political and cultural crisis. The Islamist party has been losing support, seats and influence for years. From a high of 1.5 million votes and 89 seats in 2011, it received 947,034 votes and 69 seats in 2014, but only 561,132 votes and 53 seats in 2019. It has lost massively to newly formed political parties, including Heart of Tunisia, which was the second-most popular party in 2019 with 38 seats, followed by the Democratic Current with 22. At the roots of this steady decline lie a number of factors.

The Islamist movement in Tunisia based its political stance on democratic values it claimed to share with secular political forces in the country. It rightly said that the only protections against dictatorship are democracy and the rule of law. Many political parties, including the Congress for the Republic (El-Mottamar) and the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (Ettakatol), both of which are secular parties, trusted the leaders of Ennahda and agreed to work with them. They formed a strong coalition with the aim of preventing a possible return of the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), the party that ruled the country from 1956 until 2011. That was the theoretical political platform that cemented a deal between the three parties after the revolution.

Signs of disagreement soon began to surface, however, as Ennahda began to reveal its hegemonic attitudes and stopped hiding its true agenda. Not only did it welcome many high-ranking figures from the former regime into its political structure, it even adopted the ousted regime’s strategy of placing a stranglehold on the main state institutions.

A process of political infiltration of public services and state-owned companies began as soon as Ennahda appointed Hamadi Jebali as prime minister. Police forces, the judiciary, the army, the administration, the trade unions — almost every vital political and trade body — were swiftly and systematically infiltrated under the Islamist principle of “Tamkine” — first control and then impose.

Thousands of Islamists have been appointed to state-run institutions, testifying to Ennahda’s interpretation of the “rule of law” to mean “rule of the party.” The Islamist alignment on universal values was all on the surface, and less the result of any commitment to said values than a strategy based on the principle “accept today what you can undo tomorrow.”

The preamble to the constitution states that Islam is the official religion of Tunisia. It enshrines the bond between the state and religious institutions, and opens the door for a possible reinterpretation of the constitution sooner or later. Ennahda’s leader, Rached Ghannouchi, believed that a strategy of infiltration, combined with “clientelism” on one hand and the weakness of the major secular parties on the other, would secure the party an enduring tight grip on the state and permanent domination of the political arena.

Corruption, incompetence, and regional and international geopolitical changes undermined this strategy. Signs of internal feuds began to show, fueled by the hegemonic stance of Ghannouchi and his inner circle, which was built around his family and a few other Islamist leaders whose reputations had been tarnished by allegations of suspicious financial dealings and political corruption.

Links with terrorist groups in the Middle East are continually alluded to but are not yet proven. These allegations have been made by journalists and lawyers investigating political assassinations and the financing and exporting of extremists to Syria and Libya.

On the social and moral levels, the Islamist movement has managed to hinder the further development of modernist Bourguibism (named after Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s hero of independence and the country’s first president).

On top of that, it has spread its supporters and extremists through numerous Islamist organizations, most of which benefit from subsidies the origins of which are a matter of deep concern. These organizations have created “proselyte tents” to recruit young people and advocate for the implementation of their version of Islamic values that stand high above the country's constitution.

The party's main aim is the revival of a deep conservatism that was buried under decades of the forced modernist layers of Bourguibist policies. In addition, the party aims to clear the way for the establishment of a Islamist society despite the secular universal values enshrined in Tunisia's constitution. Islamists argue that the constitution was written by elected parliamentarians and so could be rewritten.

On a moral level, the popularity of the Islamist movement was built on the fact that it was persecuted during the regimes of both Bourguiba and Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Therefore its followers believe they deserve payback; some kind of moral reparation for the mistreatment of their supporters and their families. This was at first political in nature, as Ennahda was lifted to power and granted the opportunity to have the honor of its members restored as part of a moral reparation.

Nine years later, however, Ennahda is losing its popularity and its moral high ground. The election numbers testify to the erosion of their political power. That the party managed to maintain its position as the leading political party in last year’s election is more the result of the other parties’ weaknesses than its own popularity or performance.

As a consequence of the political and moral decay, Ennahda is experiencing a major crisis. Its secretary-general, Zied Ladhari, a young, promising, savvy politician, resigned and voiced open disagreement with — even hostility to — Ghannouchi and his inner circle.

Lotfi Zitoun, the party’s political adviser and most liberal figure, also resigned after declaring it to be on the brink of collapse. Other prominent members, such as Abdellatif Mekki and Mohammed Ben Salem, are no less hostile and have strongly criticized Ghannouchi in public, calling for his resignation as party leader. Abdelhamid Jlassi, another leading figure in the party, resigned on March 5, accusing Ghannouchi and his supporters of plundering Tunisia’s resources and finances.

A wave of panic is engulfing the party. Its internal elections, which are due to take place before the end of the year, represent a litmus test. The party will be compelled either to implement profound changes that accept the principle of the rule of law in a secular, democratic country, or face being wiped from the political arena.

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Dr. Hedi Ben Abbes is Tunisia's former minister of state for foreign affairs.

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1761846

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How Arab Americans View Their Heritage And The Middle East

By James J. Zogby

November 15, 2020

Any discussion of Arab Americans must consider, at the outset, both the deep diversity as well as the shared attitudes and concerns that exist within the community. As is the case with most ethnic groups, Arab Americans are not a monolith. They hail from 22 Arabic-speaking countries. They are of different religious traditions. And while three-quarters are native born (some being fourth-generation American born), the rest are foreign-born naturalised citizens. Despite this rich diversity, a recent poll conducted by the Arab American Institute (AAI) revealed a great number of shared attitudes among significant numbers of respondents from all demographic subgroups.

While it has already been reported that the AAI poll found Arab American voters favouring Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a 59 per cent to 35 per cent, also explored were how Arab Americans viewed a number of Middle East related issues and how they evaluated both candidates’ handling of many of these same issues.

Weighed against a list of 14 major policy concerns, only 5 per cent of Arab Americans ranked resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a priority issue in determining their vote for President — the only foreign policy issue included in the list. Nevertheless, 44 per cent of the respondents indicated that resolving this conflict was one of the most important foreign policy challenges facing the US Administration. In fact, this issue was ranked the most important of the seven Middle East-related concerns covered in the poll. In second place, at 33 per cent, was “meeting the humanitarian needs in Syria. “Addressing the political and economic crisis in Lebanon” was third, at 28 per cent. These were followed by the ending the war in Yemen, improving relations with the Arab World, countering the threat posed by Iran, and stabilising and rebuilding Iraq — seen as important by between 16 per cent to 11 per cent of Arab Americans.

A strong plurality of Arab Americans saw Donald Trump’s handling of each of these foreign policy challenges as ineffective. And by a margin of 48 per cent to 32 per cent, the community’s voters said they believed that Joe Biden would be best at improving ties with the Arab World.

When asked for their attitudes about “several nations across the Middle East who are playing increasingly important roles,” Arab Americans were most favourably disposed toward Egypt, with 73 per cent saying they had favourable attitudes toward that country. Next in line was Turkey, with a 68 per cent favourable rating, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 66 per cent, Saudi Arabia at 56 per cent and Iran at 47 per cent.

Seventy-eight per cent of Arab Americans said they viewed the recently signed UAE and Bahrain agreements with Israel as a positive development, with 63 per cent expressing the hope that “it may contribute to making the Middle East a more peaceful region” and 57 per cent hoping that “it might contribute to advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

The AAI poll also asked Arab Americans how they are most likely to define themselves, whether by country of origin, religion, or as Arab American. The preferred identity was simply “Arab American” (29 per cent), followed by country of origin (27 per cent), and religion as the preferred self-identity of only 15 per cent. “All three,” Arab American, country of origin, and religion, was the choice of 17 per cent.

More than three-quarters of all Arab Americans said they were “very proud” of their ethnic heritage. It is important to note that they maintain this pride despite the fact that 61 per cent claim they have “personally experienced discrimination because of my ethnicity or country of origin.” This fear remains strong, with 70 per cent of all Arab American respondents saying they are “concerned about facing future discrimination because of their ethnicity or country of origin.”

In the end, what emerges from this survey of Arab Americans is that with all of its diversity, it is a community proud of its heritage, concerned with discrimination and sharing many attitudes on a range of issues both foreign and domestic.

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James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute

https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/how-arab-americans-view-their-heritage-and-the-middle-east-1.75276006

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What Muslim Voters Want From Joe Biden

By Sarah Parvini

November 15 2020

In the lead-up to the midterm election two years ago, Sara Deen noticed that many fellow Muslims in her South Bay community weren’t voters. Some didn’t understand the process. More lacked faith that their voice would matter, or had trouble navigating a ballot.

She decided to prepare a voter guide and hand it out to friends and members of her mosque during Friday prayers. This year, she’s seen an increase in engagement from Muslim voters — friends and acquaintances alike. They’ve asked for her help explaining state propositions, pored over her recommendations and debated their merits over WhatsApp and Zoom.

“I love it, and it means people are coming into their voice in my community,” said Deen, a Rancho Palos Verdes resident. “But what’s been disappointing is how often it feels like other politicians want to co-opt our voice, but are not super interested in what we have to say.”

In an election year defined by the coronavirus pandemic, calls for social justice and economic uncertainty, a record number of Muslims have mailed in their ballots and headed to the polls, continuing a surge in voter registration and political engagement seen after President Donald Trump took office in 2016, according to Emgage, a national get-out-the-vote group that focuses on Muslims. Emgage Action, an arm of Emgage, endorsed and supported President-elect Joe Biden.

After their newfound voices resonated loudly in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, community members say, Muslim voters want more than just a seat at the table from Biden and his administration. They, like other minority communities, want to be part of the decisions that are being made at a national level, not merely relegated to community town halls with campaign surrogates or visits from candidates in even-numbered years, when their presence could help tip close elections.

Muslim organisers say that voters have often felt ignored by presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle, with the exception of Senator Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns. They expect thoughtful engagement on key issues and inclusion from the next administration, including considering Muslims for cabinet- and upper-level positions.

Many were encouraged when Biden, as the Democratic nominee, engaged with voters as part of Emgage’s “Million Muslim Votes” plan, pledged to end the Trump administration’s travel ban on several Muslim-majority nations, and promised to fill the position of Muslim American liaison in the White House Office of Public Engagement.

“The idea is that Muslims will be included in a Biden-Harris administration,” Deen, 41, said. “I am somewhere between cautiously optimistic and doubtful.”

Nationwide, some 78% of eligible Muslims reported being registered to vote in 2020, up from 60% in 2016, data from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding show. And there are fewer “Insha’Allah voters” — those who plan to vote in an upcoming election but haven’t registered — this year, ISPU noted.

Deen would like to see Muslims in the next administration transcend what she calls “the first level of inclusion” that involves minorities who won’t “shake the status quo,” she said. The community organiser hopes that “our voices and our opinions are given equal weight and equal consideration.”

“Equal agency in driving policy in this country — that’s what I would like to see,” she said. “But I don’t know if we are there yet.”

This year, 110 Muslim candidates were on general-election ballots across 24 states and Washington, DC, according to an analysis from the Muslim organisations Jetpac, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and MPower Change. All four members of the “Squad,” the group of progressive female US House members who are outspoken Trump adversaries, were re-elected. Two — Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — are Muslim.

“Increasing our political representation is a critical part of defeating the violent rise of Islamophobia here and around the world because it forces elected officials and the media to include our perspective in the narrative on healthcare, the economy, criminal-legal system and every other issue impacting American life,” said Mohammed Missouri, executive director of Jetpac.

For years, Muslim voters have watched as President Donald Trump campaigned across the country, declaring that “Islam hates us” and calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” His administration passed a travel ban on Muslim-majority nations in 2017 and has repeatedly cut the cap for refugee admissions at a time when many Middle Eastern refugees are seeking US asylum.

That — paired with Muslim American organisations’ outreach and educational work — led to historic turnout this week, said, Youssef Chouhoud, an assistant professor of political science at Christopher Newport University.

“Now, they expect some sort of a voice, some sort of representation, when it comes to not just decisions with regards to where Muslims (live) but in terms of broader national policy as well,” he said.

During the 2018 midterm elections, about 76% of Muslims who cast ballots voted for a Democrat, while only 13% voted for a Republican, according to a 2019 study by ISPU. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that all Muslim voters automatically lean to the left, Chouhoud said.

The 53-year-old software engineer, who lives in Sierra Madre, first began working for get-out-the-vote campaigns when she supported Barack Obama’s re-election. This year, she organised for both Emgage and other civic engagement campaigns, calling potential voters in Nevada and Arizona and helping them register to vote.

“All I want is respect for me and my family,” Manaa said. “My daughter is in college. I want people to respect her. I don’t want people to attack her because she is Muslim or her mom wears a headscarf.”

The Muslim community also would like to see the Biden administration change refugee limits to allow more people into the country after the US reached a historic low under Trump, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR’s Greater Los Angeles office — something that he hopes Muslim Americans themselves will be involved with as part of Biden’s team.

Under Trump, 85% of the “countering violent extremism” grants awarded by the Department of Homeland Security explicitly targeted Muslims and other minority groups, including immigrants and refugees, more than under the Obama administration, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy institute at the New York University School of Law.

“We are hopeful that this injustice will be over,” Ayloush said. “It should never be linked to any one specific community.” — Tribune News Service

https://www.gulf-times.com/story/678026/What-Muslim-voters-want-from-Joe-Biden

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