Between Quebec’s Mosque And Paris’ Louvre: New Age Islam's Selection, 07 February 2017
New
Age Islam Edit Bureau
07 February 2017
• Between Quebec’s Mosque and Paris ’ Louvre
By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
• What Shakespearean Tragedies Tell Us About Who We Mourn For
By Ehtesham Shahid
• Who Will Save The Rohingya?
By Aijaz Zaka Syed
• Settlements Threaten Jerusalem Far More Than Embassy Move
By Chris Doyle
• Understanding The US Plan To Establish Security Zones In Syria
By Yasar Yakis
• Religious Extremism Bane Of All Societies
By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
• Has America Returned To Us?
By Mshari Al Thaydi
• How Trump Will 'Fix' the Inner Cities
By Lena Afridi
• Are We Hating Trump For The Wrong Reasons?
By Ramzy Baroud
• S Sudan Not Facing 'Genocide', But Violence Is Constant
By Zachariah Mampilly
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Between Quebec’s Mosque and Paris’ Louvre
By Abdulrahman al-Rashed
6 February 2017
Hassan Guillet, the imam of the mosque which was attacked last week in Canada’s Quebec, said during the funeral of three men killed in the attack: “We have 17 orphans. We have six widows. We have five wounded. We ask Allah for them to get them out of the hospital as soon as possible. Did I go through the complete list of victims? No. There is one victim. None of us want talk about him. But given my age, I have the courage to say it. This victim, his name is Alexandre Bissonnette. Alexandre, before being a killer he was a victim himself. Before planting his bullets in the heads of his victims, somebody planted ideas more dangerous than the bullets in his head.”
What Imam Guillet said has become more important than the debates on racial statements. It’s true. The world is living through a crisis of sick ideas which managed to transcend borders, languages and values by making use of technology, political developments and chaos.
In Quebec, one man killed six worshippers. However, those engaged in wars of hatred and incitement are today in millions. This is unprecedented in our modern era and it includes all societies. What’s the difference between Alexandre who carried his gun and attacked worshippers and Abdullah al-Hamahmy who traveled to Paris to attack and kill people at the Louvre Museum? Both men are racist and extremist but they are also both victims of this time of extremism and hatred.
Hamahmy could have become a different person and he could have lived his life as a moderate man or he could have been an extremist and a victim of any other ideology. He could be as nationalist, communist, leftist, Christian, Jewish or Hindu. A man is the product of his environment or is its victim. The world has become contaminated amid this global negligence and recklessness toward extremism in general.
Threat of ideas
As Imam Guillet said, the ideas planted in both men’s heads are more dangerous than any bullet or terrorist crimes. Extremist intellect is currently more evil than all the weapons present in the world today. We are facing a situation that’s different from the wars of the past as wars have slogans and commanders and they include governments and settlements and involve a winner and a loser. However, that’s not the case with the wars of extremist ideas and hatred battles.
The international community is still confused about how it can stop the possible conflict between nations and followers of religions. At the same time, it is preoccupied as each party blames the other. All societies suffer from this crisis. Look at the Buddhists in Burma, the Muslims in Syria and Iraq and the Christians in the West. The fire of hatred is spreading as fast as messages of incitement are spreading through different social networking tools.
What about the stance of American President Donald Trump who put himself in the center of this controversy and struggles?
Of course, we cannot accept Trump’s decisions if they are hostile to Muslims or Arabs or to other people from different religions and race.
As long as Washington’s punishment is limited to countries it politically disagrees with, like Iran, and as long as the decisions are against countries that suffer from wars and whose authority is collapsed, like Syria and Libya, we cannot consider these decisions as racist and hostile. Many of our region’s governments also shut their doors to the citizens of these countries out of fear and caution.
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Abdulrahman al-Rashed is the former General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel. A veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, he is a former editor-in-chief of the London-based leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, where he still regularly writes a political column. He has also served as the editor of Asharq al-Awsat’s sister publication, al-Majalla. Throughout his career, Rashed has interviewed several world leaders, with his articles garnering worldwide recognition, and he has successfully led Al Arabiya to the highly regarded, thriving and influential position it is in today.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2017/02/06/Between-Quebec-s-mosque-and-Paris-Louvre.html
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What Shakespearean Tragedies Tell Us About Who We Mourn For
By Ehtesham Shahid
6 February 2017
Every terror strike these days is followed by stories of its unfortunate victims. From a budding student caught in crossfire to a professional sacrificing one’s life for a coworker, these tales of human tragedy create immediate empathy. The same routine follows a natural disasters or a plane crash.
There is a rider attached to it though. We are probably more moved by the tragedies of the rich and powerful compared to the ordinary folks. The ripple effect created by the high and mighty travels far and wide. There is greater furor when the more influential is targeted while the lesser known victims of the same tragedy don’t get the same attention.
So if a café in a big city is ripped apart by a hate-filled suicide bomber, the unwinding CEO who succumbs to his injuries is likely to get more television footage than the janitor who was on duty. The security guard who blocked a blood-thirsty maniac to safeguard lives of dozens may get occasional posthumous medals but often not the same empathy. In other words, if life was unfair to these ordinary folks, death does no better.
A senior colleague from Tunisia narrated two instances to drive this point home. Very recently, some high flying Tunisian victims of Istanbul attack were mourned by the entire nation and were even hailed as the torchbearers of the country’s heritage so much so that the country’s top leaders showed up at their residence. Fair enough and it was probably deserved.
However, weeks later, when ordinary Tunisians praying in a mosque were gunned down in Quebec, Canada, next to none talked about it back home.
An unequal world
This is by no means an East vs West phenomenon as such a bias manifests itself in different ways. The World Bank last year said that natural disasters push 26 million into poverty each year. This may be a huge number but, I reckon, little more than a statistic of academic interest simply because hell would have broken loose if anything happened to 26 million rich people of this world.
In his book The Disaster Profiteers, John Mutter argues that disasters become a means by which the elite prosper at the expense of the poor. So probably, we feel greater empathy toward the rich especially when they are made equal with the poor in death.
When terror struck Mumbai in 2011, two spots became the main targets – a lavish hotel and a major railway station, besides a synagogue. Since victims at the hotel included the who’s who – not just local but also from abroad – the site every year gets more floral tributes than the railway station where ordinary workers lost their lives.
Shakespearean tragedies
But what has all this got to do with Shakespearean tragedies? Well, it’s the hamartia, or the tragic flaw that led to the downfall of all four great Shakespearean tragic heroes – Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. They were all exalted figures who occupied centre stage but caved in because of an inherent weakness in their characters.
Yet, we somehow identify with their misfortune and probably even celebrate it. It is not so much the flaw that matters as we are all flawed at some level. What makes these tragedies great is the fact that ordinary men and women, transcending historical and geographical boundaries, continue to empathize with the fall of these mighty men, which is why they are timeless classics. In other words, they are such giants in their own rights that their fall becomes even more spectacular.
In today’s day and age, as human suffering becomes more and more in-the-face, we must at least treat humans equally in death, even if it is just for the sake of maintaining sanity.
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Ehtesham Shahid is Managing Editor at Al Arabiya English. For close to two decades he has worked as editor, correspondent, and business writer for leading publications, news wires and research organizations in India and the Gulf region. He loves to occasionally dabble with teaching and is collecting material for a book on unique tales of rural conflict and transformation from around the world. His twitter handle is @e2sham.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2017/02/06/What-Shakespearean-tragedies-tell-us-about-who-we-mourn-for-.html
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Who Will Save The Rohingya?
By Aijaz Zaka Syed
Feb 7, 2017
There is no end to the continuing carnage in Myanmar. Over the past year or two, several independent international agencies and rights groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have come out with numerous damning reports, detailing the state-sanctioned campaign of incredible savagery and chilling brutality against Rohingya Muslims.
In partnership with Yale University and Aljazeera, the HRW published hundreds of spine-chilling first person accounts of Rohingya refugees, now in Bangladesh. They talked of mass killings, rapes and burning of homes and entire neighbourhoods in the Rakhine state. The watchdog backed its report with satellite images showing the burning and destruction of entire Rohingya neighbourhoods and villages.
All to no avail, of course
Now the United Nations has come up with its most damning indictment of Myanmar. In a strongly-worded report this week, the world body said that the four-month long military crackdown in Rakhine has killed hundreds of Muslims. “The ‘area clearance operations’ have likely resulted in several hundred deaths,” said the report by the UN’s Human Rights Office, detailing horrific abuses against a people long rejected and demonized by Burmese society.
The UN report, based on interviews with hundreds of refugees, said it’s “very likely” that crimes against humanity have been committed in Myanmar.
Victims recounted appalling crimes and atrocities by the security forces or civilian fighters working alongside the military and police.
At least 47 percent of those interviewed by the UN said they had a family member who had been killed in the operation, while 43 percent reported being raped.
Hundreds of Rohingya houses, schools, markets, shops, madrasas and mosques were burned by the army, police and sometimes civilian mobs, according to testimonies in the UN report.
“Numerous testimonies confirmed that the army deliberately set fire to houses with families inside, and in other cases pushed Rohingya Muslims into already burning houses. In several cases, the army or villagers locked an entire family, including elderly and disabled people, inside a house and set it on fire, killing them all.”
If anyone had any doubts about the complicity of Myanmar state in the systematic victimization and dehumanization of the Rohingya, this report with its clinical findings should remove them.
All of this, of course, has not just happened with the blessings of Myanmar’s powerful military, but it has been chiefly responsible for these crimes against humanity.
The question is, how long will they continue and who will stop them?
After Hitler’s genocidal campaign that nearly wiped out the Jews from across Europe, the world vowed to never let history repeat itself. It promised itself to “never again” remain silent in the face of genocide, ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity. Indeed, one of the main reasons that the UN came into being was to prevent such crimes. Yet an indifferent world has allowed this commitment to be broken again and again.
It’s the same chilling apathy coupled with helplessness that you see over the ethnic cleansing that Myanmar has been carrying out against its Muslims for the past many years. Indeed, according to Dr. Shaik Ubaid, who has been speaking out for the Rohingya for the past two decades as part of the US Burma Task Force, it may be the world’s longest running genocide.
The community has been the target of the worst possible oppression and persecution at the hands of both the Buddhist majority and the junta. According to the UN, the Rohingya are easily the most persecuted religious minority in the world. They are denied citizenship, healthcare and education and their movements are heavily curbed.
Many had hoped the situation would improve once the country embraced political reforms and democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi. Even the Rohingya, who have no right to vote and are not considered citizens, had hoped for her victory in the 2015 elections. Yet under this democratic dispensation, things have gone from bad to worse.
The ongoing pogrom in Rakhine province, unleashed by the military in the name of fighting terror has led to unspeakable horrors for an utterly helpless people.
The crackdown has been so overwhelming that thousands of terrified Rohingya have fled their homes. Nearly 100,000 have taken shelter in Bangladesh despite the fact that they are hardly welcome there. More than 120,000 Rohingya have been crammed into displacement camps since violence was unleashed by Buddhist mobs in 2012.
Yet the regime in Yangon lives in denial. The biggest disappointment in this unfolding catastrophe has been Suu Kyi and her party. We understood her silence over the persecution of Muslims under the junta. Today, when she is in power, her silence and inaction are not only indefensible; they are criminal.
In the words of UN rights chief Zeid Bin Ra’ad Al-Hussein, given the gravity of the issue, Myanmar demands “robust reaction” from the world community: “The Government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people and accept the responsibility to ensure that victims have access to justice, reparations and safety. The killing of people as they prayed, fished to feed their families or slept in their homes, the brutal beating of children as young as two – the perpetrators of these violations, and those who ordered them, must be held accountable.”
The US and EU, which demonstrated unseemly haste in lifting international sanctions on Myanmar, must push Suu Kyi to stop the genocide. The West as well as China and India have an immense amount of clout in Yangon. It’s time they used some of that influence to stop the carnage.
The goings-on in Myanmar have sparked helpless rage in the neighbourhood, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, where massive protests have been held. However, much of the Muslim world remains indifferent. This needs to change. A little nudge from 57 Muslim countries representing 1.7 billion people could rescue a million and a half lives. This could very well make the difference between life and death for the Rohingya.
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Aijaz Zaka Syed is an award-winning journalist. Email: Aijaz.syed@hotmail.com
Source: saudigazette.com.sa/opinion/will-save-rohingya/
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Settlements Threaten Jerusalem Far More Than Embassy Move
By Chris Doyle
7 February 2017
The frenzied debate about whether President Donald Trump will fulfil his campaign promise to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem has been becalmed momentarily. The king of Jordan has pitched in with a grave warning, as have other Arab and Muslim leaders. In campaign mode Trump left no doubt that he, unlike his predecessors, would move the embassy. In office, it was “too early” for him to comment publicly.
A stay of execution perhaps, but under the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, when the US officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the president has to sign a waiver every six months if he deems that the move might harm US national interests. Until now, every one has done so. The deadline for the next waiver is June 1, and at this moment no one knows what Trump will do.
He has already shown an intense dislike for appearing to go back on pledges. On the other hand, to advance any chance of peace, Trump may agree to the waiver. This has been the argument that has won over his predecessors for decades. As Israeli expert on Jerusalem Danny Seidemann puts it, “it would be the death certificate” for America’s role as a mediator.
All this is relevant as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu starts his grand tour of key allies in the UK, the US and Australia. He will be out to confirm a green light for ambitious plans to affect the character of Jerusalem and physically demolish any feint hope of a viable Palestinian state.
No doubt he will wish to sell his concept of a Palestinian state minus, essentially the status quo of 166 Palestinian West Bank entities getting some form of semi-autonomy under Israeli tutelage.
Symbolically the embassy move would be a dreadful step, with a danger that other states might follow. It would endorse and gloss over Israeli crimes in occupied East Jerusalem, and serve to undermine chances for peace. In addition, such a move would further damage the reputation of the Trump administration and the US across the Islamic world. It would make it harder even for Muslim allies to cooperate fully with the US on a whole host of issues.
Yet the real and immediate threat to Jerusalem as a city of three faiths and two peoples lies far more with settlements and home demolitions, which escalated throughout 2016 and even more so in the opening month of this year.
Such steps aim to change for good the physical nature of the city and the demographics on the ground, while ratcheting up the pressures on already overcrowded Palestinian neighbourhoods that suffer from a major lack of investment. Settler numbers are adding up to such an extent that it is hard to imagine any Israeli government removing them, least of all in Jerusalem.
Trump’s inauguration has ushered in an unprecedented settlement building fest, not least in Jerusalem. Netanyahu boldly announced on Jan. 22 that all restrictions on building in East Jerusalem, imposed due to international pressure, were lifted. International reaction was mild at best. On the same day, 560 settlement units were announced.
More dangerous are plans launched by Education Minister Naftali Bennet’s Jewish Home party to pass legislation to annex the mega-settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and apply Israeli law there. Israel’s Cabinet decided to defer a decision until after Netanyahu meets Trump on Feb. 15.
As Bennet knows, if in addition Ma’ale Adumim is expanded by implementing the E1 plan, it would both split the West Bank in two and cut Jerusalem off from any future Palestinian state. It would be a link in a concrete necklace of settlements from Givat Zeev in the north all the way round to Gilo in the south.
E1 is one of several mega-settlement plans long in the pipeline, designed above all to smash Palestinian dreams of a capital in Jerusalem. To the south is Givat Hamatos, which if completed would sever Jerusalem from Bethlehem and the rest of the southern part of the West Bank. As with E1 the plans are approved, and at some point tenders will be issued. All it takes is a green light from the US.
Watch out also for further pushes on those settlement enterprises inside Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem. These take place in three main areas: The Old City, Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah. For those pyromaniacs on the Israeli right who wish to stir up tensions, pushing for settler takeovers of Palestinian properties or for their demolition is a tried and tested means to inflame and spark violence.
As serious as the embassy issue is, in many ways it is an issue the Palestinians lost over 20 years ago. The settlement crisis is one that heralds total national defeat, the death of any future Palestinian state.
To save Jerusalem, the international community should start for the first time penalyzing Israel for so ruthlessly bulldozing its way through international law. Enough of the polite bromides that pass for press releases and routine recycled pleas to stop that decorate EU websites. Settlements are illegal, and it is time that those building them feel the heat.
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• Chris Doyle is the director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU). He has worked with the council since 1993 after graduating with a first class honors degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. He has organized and accompanied numerous British parliamentary delegations to Arab countries. He tweets @Doylech.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1050356
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Understanding The US Plan To Establish Security Zones In Syria
By Yasar Yakis
7 February 2017
US President Donald Trump announced that he “would absolutely do safe zones in Syria.” The project still seems vague, but it has to be taken seriously since it came from the president of a superpower. Trump phoned Saudi King Salman and received his support for the project. It cannot be implemented without Saudi financial support, but another source of finance could be the EU.
Many Syrians would prefer to stay in a safe zone in their own country than face the risks of fleeing to Europe. EU countries would thus avoid the social and economic problems caused by Syrian refugees, so the bloc may be persuaded to make a significant financial contribution to such a project if a satisfactory framework can be worked out. However, the difficulties are not only financial but also political.
Turkey has favored establishing such a zone since the early stages of the Syrian crisis. It wanted to kill three birds with one stone by translating this idea into action: To clear the region of Daesh fighters; to prevent Kurds from linking three cantons they had established in northern Syria; and to relocate to this zone 3 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey.
The zone was going to cover an area 92 km long and 30-40 km deep in Syrian territory between Jarablus and Mari. Operation Euphrates Shield was launched by Turkey for this purpose. The US and many other members of the international community were also in favor of safe zones, but their perception was not identical to Turkey’s. Washington disagreed with Ankara on the purpose of such zones, apparently so as not to harm the Kurdish cause.
The strongest Kurdish political party in Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and its military branch the People’s Protection Units (YPG), wish to link the Kobani and Afrin cantons and create an uninterrupted belt in northern Syria that will go all the way from the Syrian-Iraqi border to the western end of Turkey’s border with Syria.
The US recently started providing armored vehicles to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a militia composed of fighters from various ethnic groups but dominated by Kurds. Turkey is extremely disturbed by this, because military equipment made available to the Kurds finds its way to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is engaged in a fierce battle with Turkish security forces. Ankara is waiting anxiously to see how the Trump administration will handle this issue.
Russia used to promote Syria’s unity and territorial integrity. However, after the Astana meeting of Jan. 24, it announced a set of ideas for Syria’s future constitution, proposing a federal structure for the state and removal of the word “Arab” from the name of the Syrian Arab Republic.
Turkey held back, because any step that promotes Kurdish autonomy in Syria is an extremely sensitive subject for Turks. Russia and the US may endorse this set of ideas, because they are both federal states and believe in the merit of federalism.
The Kurds are pushing the US and Russia to compete for more substantive support for their cause. Both countries may agree to cooperate on this issue. The provision, for the first time, of armored vehicles to the SDF may be a sign of a US effort to counterbalance the increasing support extended by Russia to promote the Kurdish cause.
Iran is the staunchest supporter of Syria’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, so establishing a security zone may not appeal to it. Russia may be inclined to check Iranian influence in Syria to promote its own influence. However, Moscow has several overlapping interests with Tehran, so there are limits to what Russia will be prepared to do to curb Iran’s role.
If one or more security zones are established in Syria despite all these intricacies, it will be a big achievement for the Trump administration and a sign of very concrete progress in the Syrian crisis, but it is too early to be hopeful.
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• Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkey and founding member of the ruling AK Party.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1050351
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Religious Extremism Bane Of All Societies
By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
7 February 2017
Hussein Guillet, the imam of the mosque in Quebec, Canada, in which a gunman opened fire last week, said in a recent sermon: “We have 17 orphans. We have six widows. We have five wounded. We ask Allah to get them out of hospital as soon as possible.”
He added: “Did I go through the complete list of victims? No. There is one victim none of us want to talk about, but given my age I have the courage to say it. This victim’s name is Alexandre Bissonnette. Alexandre, before being a killer, was a victim himself. Before planting bullets in the heads of his victims, somebody planted ideas more dangerous than the bullets in his head.”
What Guillet said in his mosque has become more important than exchanging racist statements. The world suffers from a crisis of sick ideas that have crossed seas, borders, languages and human values, taking advantage of technology, political climates and chaos. In Quebec, one man killed six worshippers, but there are millions fighting wars of hatred and incitement. This is unprecedented in modern history, and includes all communities.
What is the difference between Bissonnette, who gunned down worshippers, and Abdullah Al-Hamahmi, who travelled to Paris to commit a similar crime in the Louvre museum? Both are racist extremists, but they are also victims of an era of extremism and hatred.
Al-Hamahmi could have lived differently, as a moderate in every aspect of life. He could also have been a victim of extremist ideas as a nationalist, communist, leftist, racist, Christian, Jew or Hindu. People are a victim of their environment, and the global environment has become contaminated under international indifference to extremism in general.
As Guillet said in his eulogy to the victims, the ideas that were planted in the heads of both extremists are more dangerous than bullets and terrorist crimes. Extremist ideology has become far more malicious than all the world’s weapons. War now is totally different from past wars. Previous wars used to have slogans, leaders, governments, bargains, victory and defeat, unlike wars against extremist ideas and battles of hatred.
The international community is still confused about how to stop potential clashes between nations and followers of all religions. All countries blame one another, but every society is suffering from this crisis: Buddhists in Myanmar, Muslims in Syria and Iraq, and Christians in the West. The blaze of hatred is spreading as rapidly as the inciting messages via various means of communication.
What about the position of US President Donald Trump, who put himself in the middle of a whirlpool of ideas and conflicts? We cannot accept Trump’s decisions if they are hostile to Muslims, Arabs, or other races and religions.
However, as long as Washington limits its sanctions to countries with which it has political disputes, such as Iran, or to states whose authorities have collapsed due to war, such as Syria and Libya, we cannot consider such decisions as racist or hostile. Several governments in the Middle East deny entry to citizens from such troubled countries out of fear and caution.
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• Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya News Channel, and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1050346
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Has America Returned To Us?
By Mshari Al Thaydi
6 February 2017
Will Yemen be the first battleground of confrontation between Iran’s Khomeini republic and the new United States led by Donald Trump? According to Foreign Policy, the White House has through its discussions on national security concluded that eliminating Iranian ambitions in the Middle East is the title of the new American policy.
According to the magazine, Yemen will be the first battleground in Trump’s confrontation with Iran. The manifestations of this frank American involvement in Yemen alongside “the allies” led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to fight Iranian-backed Houthi militias and their miserable ally ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh are: intensifying drone attacks, deploying more military consultants, carrying out more commandos operations, speeding up the approval of military attacks against the militias and expanding efforts to stop Iranian arms shipment to the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and all Arab, Muslim and international allies must invest in this new American political “momentum” to confront the Iranian destructive project in Yemen and other countries. We don’t know if this momentum will continue at this speed and for how long it will last. Most probably, we will have at least half a year. During this time, it’s possible to achieve many political and field gains in Yemen thanks to this powerful American momentum.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and all Arab, Muslim and international allies must invest in this new American political “momentum” to confront the Iranian destructive project in Yemen and other countries.
‘State sponsor of terrorism’
However, the situation is completely different with Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. After assuming his post, Flynn criticized Iran and described it as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” adding that with the Trump administration “the days of turning a blind eye to Iran’s hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.”
The commanders of the Khomeini regime, particularly Revolutionary Guards’ commanders, are aware of how dangerous the situation is. They are in a state of alert and they are testing determinations. Perhaps, Revolutionary Guards’ media and cultural consultant Hamid Reza Muqaddam Far’s statement describing Trump as a madman reflects their panic.
We’ve lived through difficult times with Obama, the Khomeini republic's friend and the orchestrator of secret deals. The repercussions of this approach were Iranian domination in Arab countries, security chaos and sectarian divisions.
Decisiveness stipulates seizing the emerging opportunities especially that there’s a new American administration now. The enthusiasts of this Obama letdown policy are many and active, therefore, “if the wind blows ride it.”
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Saudi journalist Mshari Al Thaydi presents Al Arabiya News Channel’s “views on the news” daily show “Maraya.” He has previously held the position of a managing senior editor for Saudi Arabia & Gulf region at pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. Al Thaydi has published several papers on political Islam and social history of Saudi Arabia. He appears as a guest on several radio and television programs to discuss the ideologies of extremist groups and terrorists.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2017/02/06/Has-America-returned-to-us-.html
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How Trump Will 'Fix' The Inner Cities
By Lena Afridi
07 February 2017
Thousands of people have protested against Donald Trump's executive order that bans refugees, immigrants, and legal permanent residents of seven Muslim majority countries from entering the United States.
Across the country, there were similar scenes: US's largest cities not only welcomed refugees and immigrants, but expressed their pride in being sanctuaries for those looking to create a new life.
Elected officials have vowed to keep their municipalities sanctuary cities, but even the ideology of a safe place for immigrants has come under attack. The Trump administration has threatened to cut federal funding to cities that do not comply with new, stringent immigration policies.
While emergency actions against immediate threats to immigrant rights must continue, we should prepare ourselves for the ongoing impact of a Trump presidency on our cities beyond these most shocking edicts that have been roundly denounced as unconstitutional.
Impact of Trump on immigrant America
Housing, jobs and policing affect all Americans, but immigrants have particular need in all of these areas.
Immigrant justice groups in cities across the nation have been fighting for decades for access to housing, jobs, healthcare and against the expansion of the US' growing deportation and incarceration complex.
In the fight for a just and inclusive immigration policy, the tremendous impact of Trump's economic plans on immigrant US cannot be forgotten or minimised.
Though immigrants are rapidly moving out of city centres, immigration remains concentrated in urban areas, as 85 percent of foreign born Americans still live in the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas.
Trump's economic policies are going to have a massive impact on immigrant US, regardless of the fate of his most shocking executive actions.
In an era where rampant inequality consumes American cities,Trump's plans to "fix inner cities" threaten to completely gut urban areas. Unless action is taken, Trump's city will be uninhabitable to all but the wealthiest.
In Trump's city, public housing, a resource which has provided shelter to the most vulnerable, will be a thing of the past.
The appointment of Ben Carson as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development continues to alarm housing advocates and policy experts. Carson has vowed to deeply cut federal funding to programmes that make housing affordable. In a time where low and moderate-income families can barely afford housing costs, federal funding is vital.
Low-income tenants spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, while middle-class households spend up to 30 percent of their income on housing costs.
The housing department itself considers households spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing as rent-burdened. This means a substantial portion of American tenants are already rent-burdened.
As Carson plans to slash funds for public housing, this number will continue to rise. For example, New York City's Housing Authority is home to 700,000 New Yorkers - a population about the size of Boston. In a city where the median rent is $3,185 a month, the loss of public housing will no doubt be devastating.
In Trump's city, the number of poor people will increase dramatically. Perhaps most alarmingly, Carson has expressed his view that poverty is a "choice".
Though Trump ran on a platform of promised job growth, it has been projected that if he follows through with his pledged policies, the US will enter a recession by 2018 (PDF). Economists estimate that real income will remain stagnant at $45,000 a year by the end of Trump's term.
In the last recession, immigrants and people of colour bore the brunt of the economic crisis. Families with at least one immigrant family member saw a 38.3 percent decline in total wealth.
By the official end of the recession in 2009, Latinos lost 66 percent of their net worth, Asian American households experienced a 31 percent loss of total wealth, and black Americans saw a 53 percent decline in net worth.
Simultaneously, the tariff on imports, notably from Mexico, will increase US consumer prices by 3 percent. According to the US census, 17 percent of immigrants live in poverty and foreign-born workers tend to earn 19 percent less than the average wages of their American born counterparts on average.
The impact of a higher cost of living nationwide, coupled with stagnant wages and a depreciation of wealth will create difficulty for all Americans, but especially newly arrived Americans living in the country's already expensive urban areas, to make ends meet.
Legalisation of racial profiling
In Trump's city, immigrants will constantly fear deportation or imprisonment, regardless of documentation status. Trump recently signed an order that allows state and local law enforcement to enforce immigration law. The order gives local police power previously held only by federal authorities and essentially legalises racial profiling of anyone suspected of being undocumented.
In Trump's city, it will be impossible for any immigrant to survive except for the very wealthy. Immigrants are the heart of American cities. If we are truly committed to the values of our cities, it is vital to fight for the future, to fight for the hearts of our homes and the future of our neighbours.
Just as we mobilise to fight the injustices of an egregiously callous and unlawful immigration policy, we must continue to mobilise to ensure that US cities can be places where everyone can live in dignity and without fear.
How will we develop a political strategy that keeps the most immediate threats in view while also building on the ongoing struggles within immigrant communities? That is the task of the moment.
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Lena P Afridi is an independent writer who specialises in income inequality and racial and economic justice. She holds a Master's in Regional Planning from Cornell University.
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/trump-fix-cities-170205105235174.html
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Are We Hating Trump For The Wrong Reasons?
By Ramzy Baroud
6 February 2017
I fear that many of us are hating US President Donald Trump for the wrong reasons. Multitudes are being swayed by mainstream media-inspired demonization of him, based on selective assumptions and half-truths. US mainstream media, which rarely deviates from supporting the American government’s conduct, however reckless, is presenting him as an aberration of otherwise egalitarian, sensible, peace-loving US policies at home and abroad.
Trump may be described with all the demeaning terminology that one’s livid imagination can muster. But if you chant in the street “I’m with her,” in reference to defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, it means you are entirely missing the point.
To reminisce about the days of Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, his oratory skills, clean diplomacy and model, “relatable” family, means you have bought into the mass deception, intellectual demagoguery and stifling group-think that pushed us to these extremes in the first place. Within this context, missing the point can be dangerous, even deadly.
It is interesting how Yemeni lives suddenly matter, referring to the US military’s botched raid late last month on an alleged Al-Qaeda stronghold in Yemen, killing mostly civilians. A beautiful 8-year-old girl, Nawar Al-Awlaki, was killed in the operation, planned under the Obama administration but approved by Trump. Many chose to ignore that her 16-year-old brother, also a US citizens, was killed by the US military under Obama a few years earlier.
Yemen has been a target in America’s so-called “war on terror” for many years. Many civilians have been killed, their deaths only questioned by human rights groups, seldom by mainstream media. Yemen is one of seven Muslim-majority countries whose citizens were subject to being barred from entering the US. The emotional mass response by hundreds of thousands of protesters rejecting such an abhorrent decision is heartening but also puzzling.
The US military, under Obama, shied away from leading major wars, but instead instigated numerous smaller conflicts. “The whole concept of war has changed under Obama,” the LA Times quoted a Middle East expert as saying. Obama “got the country out of ‘war,’ at least as we used to see it,” said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We’re now wrapped up in all these different conflicts, at a low level and with no end in sight.”
The Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone. Countries that were bombed included Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia, five of the seven countries whose citizens were denied entry by Trump. The harm that Obama did to some of the poorest war-torn countries in the world far exceeds what Trump has done so far.
Iraq and Libya were not always poor. Their oil, natural gas and other strategic resources made them targets for US wars, under four administrations prior to Trump’s infamous arrival. Libya was the richest country in Africa, and relatively stable until Clinton — secretary of state during Obama’s first term in office — decided otherwise.
In 2011 she craved war. A New York Times report, citing 50 top US officials, left no doubt that Clinton was the catalyst in the decision to go to war. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, furious about her support for a “broader mission” in Libya, told Obama and Clinton the US army was already engaged in enough wars. “Can I finish the two wars I’m already in before you guys go looking for a third one?” Gates reportedly asked.
Now we are being led to believe that the war enthusiasts of the past are peacemakers, because Trump’s antics are simply too much to bear. The hypocrisy of it all should be obvious, but some insist on ignoring it.
Party tribalism and gender politics aside, Trump is a mere extension and natural progression of previous US administrations’ agendas that launched avoidable, unjust wars, embedded fear, and fanned the flames of Islamophobia, hate for immigrants, etc. There is hardly a single bad deed that Trump has carried out, or intends to carry out, that does not have roots in a policy championed by previous administrations.
His intention to build a wall along the US-Mexico border is the brainchild of former President Bill Clinton, who got a standing ovation from Democrats when he proposed the wall and a crackdown on illegal immigrants in his 1995 State of the Union address.
Muslims have been an easy target for at least 20 years. They were mainly the target of the Secret Evidence law in 1996, and “suspected” Muslims were either jailed indefinitely or deported without their lawyers being informed of their charges. It was then called the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, later expanded to give immigration authorities the right to deport even green-card-holding permanent residents.
Few protested the undemocratic, no-due-process law, and the media barely covered it, as most of those held were Palestinian activists, intellectuals and university professors. The 1996 act morphed into the Patriot Act following the Sept. 11 attacks. The new act undermined the US constitution, giving the government unprecedented domestic authority to arrest and detain people, and spy on whoever it wished, with no legal consequences.
The Obama administration had no qualms using and abusing such undemocratic, unconstitutional powers. But where were the millions protesting “fascism,” as they are doing now? Was Obama simply too elegant and articulate to be called fascist, even though he engendered the same domestic policy outlook as Trump?
Trump is extremely wealthy, but if one examines the US wealth inequality gap under Obama, one perceives some uncomfortable truths. While the rich got richer under Obama, “inequality in America (grew) even at the top,” reports Inequality.org. The gap between the rich and super-rich continued to expand, barely phased out by the Great Recession of 2008.
In 2014, a Mother Jones headline summed up the tragic story of unfair distribution of wealth in the US: “The Richest 0.1 Percent is About to Control More Wealth than the Bottom 90 Percent.” Trump is but one profiteer from an economy driven by real-estate gamblers and financial chancers. Today’s political conflict in the US is not a clash over values, but a war between elites par excellence. It is also a war of brands.
Obama spent eight years reversing George W. Bush’s bad brand, but without reversing any of his disreputable deeds. On the contrary, Obama redefined and expanded war, advanced the nuclear arms race and destabilized more countries. Trump is also a brand, an unpromising one. The product — whether military aggression, racism, Islamophobia, anti-immigration policies, economic inequality, etc. — remains unchanged. That is the uncomfortable truth.
• Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books, and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1050261
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S Sudan Not Facing 'Genocide', But Violence Is Constant
By Zachariah Mampilly
07 February 2017
On New Year's day, I boarded an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Entebbe, Uganda. Formally dressed members of the South Sudanese diaspora crowded the propeller plane alongside businessmen from Uganda, Kenya and South India.
We were headed to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on one of three different flights that leaves for the country every weekday. Arriving at the ramshackle airport, we shuffled into four different lines housed in a makeshift structure before entering a scrimmage to secure our bags.
South Sudan has again been in the spotlight with warnings of a looming genocide voiced by everyone from the former US Secretary of State John Kerry to most recently, the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Yet, leaving Entebbe that Sunday, the banality of our departure scene made me believe that such ominous warnings were mere hyperbole. I was right and wrong. South Sudan is not heading towards a genocide. But the spectre of violence is omnipresent, even as it resists categorisation within easily comprehensible notions of genocide.
Talk of genocide, in fact, serves to obfuscate more prevalent forms of violence that are slowly squelching the country's freedom dreams. Debate about whether violence in South Sudan is genocidal or not echoes debates in Darfur in the early 2000s. Those frenzied debates produced only inaction, as the international community wilted in the face of the complex configuration of internal and external political forces that defined the fighting.
Stories of daily violence and insecurity
During my week in Juba, I spoke with numerous members of the local Equatorian community. They recounted stories of daily violence and insecurity at the hands of government soldiers.
One middle-class woman told me of a domestic worker being raped at gunpoint by army soldiers in the daytime. A young man spoke of being beaten and robbed by soldiers twice in the past month. Another claimed to have lost his father, mother and brother at the hands of government supporters.
Such violence has become normalised in many parts of South Sudan. In July, fighting broke out between forces loyal to Vice President Riek Machar and the government, controlled by the former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), setting off the latest crisis.
For three days, armed groups fought for control of the city. Hundreds of civilians were raped and killed as government supporters went door to door searching for members of the Nuer community who share their ethnic origins with the former vice president.
So why not refer to this situation as genocide? If you speak with government officials and local community members, it is surprisingly not the government that employs genocidal talk. Rather, it is members of the Equatorian community who speak of expulsion and extermination of government forces.
Though forced to hide in their homes for three days as the fighting continued in the streets of Juba, the local Equatorian population was not the target of either side, at least initially. Since then, however, as many Nuer have fled, it is the Equatorians who have come to view the Dinka-dominated SPLA as a conquering army to be expunged.
Talk of a revenge is omnipresent. I spoke with a member of a local defence militia, one of many groups being organised independently by young Equatorian men. He detailed for me the plans being put in place - weapons stockpiled, oaths sworn, women and children moved across the border to refugee camps or private homes in northern Uganda.
Later, I travelled by road across that border and was told about camps swollen with women and children while the young men return to Juba to protect their lands. These young men believe that Machar, currently under house arrest in South Africa, will return to fight in March and they are preparing to join the fray.
Even educated professionals speak openly about their bias against the Dinka people, refusing to rent their homes to members of the community, citing colonial-era racial anthropology to justify their beliefs.
Talk of genocide
"Genocide" prepares us for violence that is spectacular. It goads us into believing that when confronted with extreme evil, we will have no choice, but to react.
But talk of genocide simultaneously insulates us from the more protracted, and often bewilderingly complex, low-level violence that has already destroyed much of the country. This violence seems to be acceptable, as it does not seem to surpass our threshold for outrage.
Talk of genocide also has a deeper impact. It forces us to divide a conflict into innocent victims and vicious perpetrators. But what is the value of such neat binaries when almost every community can speak the language of victimhood?
I refer not to the layers of oppression that almost all South Sudanese know intimately from years of fighting the government in Khartoum, but the recurrent and diffused violence between South Sudanese communities that has come to define independence.
This is a logic that the SPLA government is eager to embrace, pointing out that even as the international community rushes to condemn its behaviour, it has faced violent challenges to its rule that any legitimate government must quell.
As one defender of the government, Taban Abel Aguek, succinctly put it, "Fighting negative forces does not amount to genocide." Simultaneously, Equatorians, by and large, are loathe to embrace the language of victimhood, speaking instead about their willingness and ability to rid their land of the Dinka "oppressors" forever.
But words are never enough. What is needed in South Sudan is not continued debate about what to call the violence, but an accurate assessment of the relative strength and motivations of the belligerents.
Even as the SPLA continues to dominate the military, it faces a number of organised challenges, not only from Machar, but also from other militias that have entered the security void.
This diffusion of military strength is unlikely to produce a clear victor in the battles that lie ahead. Nor is the conflict likely to turn genocidal, as all sides have the capacity to fight back.
Yet, even as genocide may be avoided, civilians in South Sudan will continue to bear the costs of the prolonged bloodshed.
Zachariah Mampilly is the author of Rebel Rulers and Africa Uprising. He is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Vassar College.
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/sudan-facing-genocide-violence-constant-170205104411113.html
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URL: https://newageislam.com/middle-east-press/between-quebec’s-mosque-paris’-louvre/d/109979