Twin Brothers Kill Their Parents, As Terrorism Sneaks Into Our Homes: New Age Islam's Selection, 27 June 2016
New Age
Islam Edit Bureau
27 June 2016
• Twin Brothers Kill Their Parents, As Terrorism Sneaks Into Our Homes
By Turki Aldakhil
• Honour Killings In Pakistan: Enough Is Enough!
By Waqar Mustafa
• Hamas Is Firmly In Power, but It Has Yet To Deliver
By Geoffrey Aronson
• A Twist of Fate Called Brexit
By Maria Dubovikova
• Europe Is the Creation of the Third World
By Hamid Dabashi
• Lebanon and Jordan May Collapse under a new wave of Refugees
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Twin Brothers Kill Their Parents, As Terrorism Sneaks Into Our Homes
By Turki Aldakhil
26 June 2016
It was a horrific crime. A mother and father were stabbed to death in Saudi Arabia by their own twin sons. The crime was premeditated, according to a statement issued by the Saudi interior ministry, but Saudis were shocked as they woke to the news last Friday.
A year ago, last Ramadan, a wanted man killed his father in the kingdom’s southwest region of Assir.
We cannot consider such crimes as incidental or copycat occurances. When such crimes occur, we suddenly wake up and see things, such as intellectual and sentimental mobilization, clearer than before. However, it's only a matter of time before we resort to silence again.
Only 20 minutes of dialogue a week between family members can expose an imminent danger that can be deterred
Those who commit such crimes have been educated at schools and are fed on the rhetoric available around them. We have huge responsibilities to live up to as we must allocate time to sit with our children and debate with them.
Only 20 minutes of dialogue a week between family members can expose an imminent danger that can be deterred. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) makes use of games and social media to recruit people. Messages are sent out to youths to recruit them, attract them and question them about precise details related to their household.
A family may get preoccupied with working to provide for their children. However, one must be aware of what is going on and sit down with their children for discussions that could reveal a lot of details that may otherwise remain hidden. Terrorism is silently sneaking into our homes without us noticing.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2016/06/26/Terrorism-sneaks-into-homes-as-brothers-kill-their-parents-.html
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Honour Killings In Pakistan: Enough Is Enough!
By Waqar Mustafa
June 27, 2016
There are laws to check this scourge but none are implemented to protect women
The year 2016 had good tidings for women in Pakistan at its start. Passage of a bill on women's protection against violence by the legislature in the Punjab province handed them something to cheer about. And it seemed that other provinces, using their powers devolved to them in 2010 through a constitutional change, would happily take a cue from the country's most populous province and have such an instrument of theirs as well. Instead, as the year wore away, it was back to normal; violence against women being rampant and the authorities kowtowing to the patriarchal mindset misinterpreted as religion by some politically manipulative groups, and thus keeping in limbo the law that might have given them some solace.
Other modes of violence against women aside, recent months have seen women being murdered quite frequently in what is called "honour killing" to justify their odious crime and cloud culpability. According to the United Nations, the term risks "reinforcing discriminatory misperceptions that women embody the 'honour' of the male and the community". The violence seeks to punish women for seeking to exercise independent choice, for defying not only the wishes of their families but social expectation - for daring to be free.
That such killings are premeditated is evident from the slaying of a pregnant woman by her family in Gujranwala because she married against family members' wishes three years ago. In a case earlier this month, a teen was burned to death in Lahore by her mother and brother for marrying against their wishes. A dozen leaders of a remote village of Abbottabad grabbed a teenage girl from her home, bound her and set her on fire in a van who they thought had helped a couple to elope. An edict by an influential group of 40 Pakistani religious leaders called the Sunni Ittehad Council said such revenge killings constituted an "unlawful, unconstitutional, undemocratic, unethical and unjustifiable act that must be stopped by the state at any cost". Such incidents are not exclusive to any one religion, however. A Christian man beat his teenage sister to death with a large wooden stick, reportedly because he didn't want her to marry her Christian neighbour.
Violence against women is rampant in Pakistan, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. It said that in the first five months of 2016, as many as 212 women were killed in the name of "honour." According to the watchdog's report, there were more than 1,100 "honour killings" in 2015. Such extrajudicial attacks almost always target women. 1,096 women died in honour killings in 2015, compared to 88 men. That total represents an increase from 2014, when 1,005 women were killed, and 2013, when the commission reported 869 such deaths.
The country's law literally allows killers to get away with murdering the women in their families in letting the family of a murder victim to pardon the perpetrator. This practice is often used in cases of "honour" killings, where the victim and perpetrator belong to the same family, in order to evade prosecution. But legislative changes are only a part of the solution. The 2004 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act made "honour" killings a criminal offence, but the law remains poorly enforced. It is left to a judge's discretion to decide whether to impose a prison sentence when other relatives of the victim forgive the killer - a loophole, which critics say remains exploited. A man accused of murdering his mother was released from prison thanks to a family pardon. He went on to murder two of his young sisters in cold blood earlier this year.
In February this year, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to eradicate the "evil" of "honour killings". "Anyone who does this must be punished and punished very severely," said Sharif speaking after the premiere at the Prime Minister's House of a short documentary about "honour killings". Its director, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, went on to win an Oscar. "Changing the law is something that needs to be done at the earliest possibility." But the promise is yet to be kept. Lest the year 2016 ticks off without the government acting on the menace! Without changes in the law, such crimes will continue to proliferate.
Pakistani authorities should urgently investigate and prosecute those responsible for the recent jump in such killings in the country without bowing to pressure from local, political and religious leaders. They should plug the judicial system's loopholes. They should also ensure that safe emergency shelter, protection, and support is available to any woman or girl who may be at risk from her family.
The society too needs to address the widespread and pervasive cultural biases women face that is often the motivating factor behind violence against women. Not considered independent, equal members of society even in Pakistan's most advanced urban settings, women find their fate tied to their (invariably) male guardian's fortune throughout their life. These cultural biases may be the hardest to overcome, but social awareness facilitated by the educational institutions and the media is the only way "honour killings" will gain widespread public disapproval. Enough should now be enough!
Source: khaleejtimes.com/editorials-columns/honour-killings-in-pakistan-enough-is-enough
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Hamas Is Firmly In Power, but It Has Yet To Deliver
By Geoffrey Aronson
26 Jun 2016
Nine years ago this month, the security forces of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, in the Gaza Strip suffered an embarrassing, debilitating defeat. In a matter of days, combined Hamas forces, including the military arm, the Qassam Brigades, and the more numerous Carabinieri forces of the Tanfizzia routed the alphabet soup of Palestinian security and intelligence forces led by Mohammad Dahlan.
No one was more surprised than Hamas officials at the complete dissolution of the Fatah-led military command in Gaza after months of escalating skirmishes. During the June 2007 battles, the surprising collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA) forces encouraged local Hamas commanders to shut off their mobile phones, cutting communication with Hamas' less aggressive political leadership.
Freed from the cautionary counsel of the exiled politburo led by Khaled Meshal, Hamas commanders rolled all over Gaza, achieving a complete military victory, the consequences of which are still being felt by Gaza's long-suffering population of 1.8 million.
A New Chapter
Hamas' assumption of power in Gaza opened a new chapter in the political history of the modern Middle East.
Years before the Arab Spring exploded throughout the region, an avowedly Islamic party joined to the Muslim Brotherhood now ruled in Gaza.
Since then, and notwithstanding serial conflicts with Israel, Hamas' hold on Gaza has been consolidated. Fatah and its cadre have removed Gaza's administration. Abbas, who rarely travels anywhere in Palestine outside Ramallah, refuses to visit.
Despite the obstacles placed in its path, Hamas has achieved an historic victory.
No one questions that the Israeli army could occupy Gaza. The key point, however, is that Israel, after weighing the pros and cons of such a move, has chosen to leave Gaza to Hamas. Almost a decade after it came to power, Hamas rules all but unchallenged.
Despite the obstacles placed in its path, Hamas has achieved an historic victory. But in a hundred years, no one will remember either Hamas nor Fatah.
Historians will instead record that, for the first time in modern Palestine, a real Palestinian army was created in Gaza that fights Israel, controls territory, and, at a great and continuing cost, deters its enemies.
Respect for Hamas
Israel vows that the next war will be Hamas' last, but in the meantime, it has evolved a respect for Hamas forces and a practical preference for Hamas' continued rule in Gaza over the claims of all others, including its nominal peace partners in the PLO and Fatah.
Israel has left Gaza, but it has not left Gaza alone. Hamas rules with Israel's forbearance, but Israel has no interest in enabling Hamas or Gaza to enjoy the fruits of its victory.
Determined to assure that Gazans be permanently kept on the cusp of economic and environmental implosion, Israel, with the pained acquiescence of much of the international community, has confronted Hamas with an unending series of economic and humanitarian crises that constantly test the movement's political staying power and popularity.
Such difficulties - from the draconian siege that has engineered the destruction of Gaza's productive economy and made 70 percent of the population dependent upon international assistance, to a border regime maintained by Israel and Egypt that has transformed Gaza into an open air prison - aim at destroying Hamas' popular support, an objective that incredibly has yet to be achieved.
Hamas' staying power speaks not only to Hamas' continuing ability, however compromised, to present itself as the standard-bearer of Palestinian national dignity but also to the endemic shortcomings of its Palestinian opponents.
Yet, nine years after its surprise victory, Hamas too is suffering the ill effects of its continuing failure to do more than survive efforts of its antagonists to constrain its power.
Presiding over the slow motion destruction of Gaza's social and economic foundations is not a legacy to which Hamas can point with any pride.
Gaza's Continued Suffering
Simply surviving the efforts of enemies to weaken you may be an achievement, but it only thinly masks what has become in practice a race to the bottom - for Gazans, who are stuck in the stifling confines of a besieged and intolerant Alcatraz and for Palestinians as a whole who will next year "celebrate" half a century of occupation.
Whatever Hamas' achievements, Gaza's continued suffering is the most enduring testament to the continuing inability of Palestine's political class...
Whatever Hamas' achievements, Gaza's continued suffering is the most enduring testament to the continuing inability of Palestine's political class, led by Fatah and Hamas - to chart a path to sovereignty, independence and an end to the occupation.
This is the only standard that matters for Palestinian parties like Hamas and Fatah that were born in order to gain independence. The failure to achieve this goal dwarfs whatever achievements they can claim, in Gaza or elsewhere.
Reconciliation and unity in the wake of the collapse of the PA in Gaza remain the basis for a vital but ever-elusive common Palestinian political programme.
But interminable efforts to achieve a reconciliation among Palestinian political forces have only recently recorded yet another failure.
Meetings in Doha earlier this month meant to patch things up instead broke up precipitously, accompanied by the usual recriminations.
A rapprochement between Cairo and Gaza, no less than reconciliation, and an Israeli decision to loosen its iron grip on Gaza trade, a potential result of an imminent Israeli-Turkey settlement, is at the top of Hamas' to-do list.
But yet another meeting earlier this month in Cairo under the auspices of the Egyptian security services, who closely hold the Gaza and Palestine files, was postponed at the last minute.
Relations between the Sisi government and Hamas' military and political leadership in Gaza are in the deep freezer, with no warming in sight.
After running Gaza for almost a decade, Hamas remains a pretender to power. It is firmly in the chair, but it has yet to meet the challenge of charting a path that will free Gaza, and Palestine, from a debilitating status quo, one that promises a new generation of Palestinians only misery and discontent.
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/06/hamas-firmly-power-deliver-160623061214488.html
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A Twist Of Fate Called Brexit
By Maria Dubovikova
26 June 2016
Thomas Mair has won. Jo Cox has failed. No, this is not ascertaining the recent murder of the brilliant British MP, but an allegorical description of the results of the Brexit vote. The British people have rejected the several advantages of life in the European family. They said no to refugees and yes to nationalism; probably yes to disintegration.
The reasons why the majority had voted to leave are numerous, but three major factors played a key role in determining the result. First is the traditional, geographically predetermined, British nationalism, which received a strong boost since the strengthening of Brussels influence and power, since the beginning of the refugee crisis and the rise of xenophobia and Islamophobia. Secondly, it was also about irresponsible attitude toward the referendum itself.
According to recent data, “leave” voters now avow that they would re-vote to “stay” if the second referendum were offered. This is because, while voting to “leave” they could not actually imagine that such a scenario is really possible in their country. Thirdly, it is elementary ignorance of basic understanding of matters related to vote.
Many people voted not by using their mind, but intuition, or just by chance, plunging their country into a crisis in the process. Churchill’s famous quote is relevant here: “The best argument against a democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter!” This average voter has apparently thrown a huge stone in the system that generations have been constructing brick by brick.
In the current situation, the resignation of David Cameron looks like an act of cowardice. He played with the European Union, tried to arm-twist Brussels and pushed it to give Britain more preferences. He basically overplayed the entire thing. It was he who started the Brexit story. He had to be the one to accept the results no matter what they were. To start a fight and then to retreat from the battlefield is something lacking nobility.
Cameron has now left it to someone else to solve the problem he caused. His resignation is not a punishment, but a rescue, because to lead the country after such vote and such decision would have been the true punishment for him. Matthew Norman wrote in The Independent, that Cameron “will go down in history as the Prime Minister who killed his country”.
It should also be admitted that David Cameron would have hardly launched a debate over Brexit if he had known that the vote would be “to leave”. He was sure of the opposite result.
There is also something wrong with the election survey these days. They depict a false picture to the public and provide inaccurate trends. Badly conducted surveys are dangerous for referendums.
EU Structure
Brexit is wrong even though one should admit that the European Union is not an ideal structure and that its political system does not work properly. Instead of harmonizing the policies of the member states, it follows the diktat of Brussels, dominated by Berlin over entire Europe. And if one adds to this cocktail the influence Washington exerts on Brussels, then in my opinion, it pushes the EU in a direction most favorable to the US. Either way, the political imperfection of the union is obvious.
But its economic component, the freedom of movement without limitations, opportunity to work wherever you want within the borders of the Union – all of this is something that should not be wasted. The system needs to be safeguarded by all parties involved. And to refuse the advantages of the economic unity and social mobility appears wrong, if not silly.
The Brexit vote is a blot in the history of integration and globalization. This is now beginning of a new chapter for the European Union. It appears that the countries are not only willing to join this union but to leave as well. The possibility of domino effect remains. To cope up with these, countries would prefer to close their borders and try to tackle challenges at a national level.
Russia would be happy with the disruption of NATO. But as far as the European Union is concerned, Moscow wants it to be strong
Some political figures and the media congratulated Vladimir Putin over the referendum results and insinuated that the “leave” vote is his personal victory. Such statements are uncalled for. Russia would be happy with the disruption of NATO. But as far as the European Union is concerned, Moscow wants it to be strong. And the stronger, the better.
To United Kingdom, where Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay, this referendum promises the loss of these parts in the long term. It literally means the beginning of the collapse of what was once one of the most influential states in the world. And the separatist movement in Scotland and Northern Ireland may finally find the strength to call for independence, something they had been fighting for centuries. There is still a probability that the second referendum will be held, which could save the situation. However such a decision would look awkward, at the least.
It’s a twist of fate that the foundations of a European Union were laid down by a British Prime Minister and another British Prime Minister has undermined these foundations precisely 70 year later. What started with Winston Churchill has ended with David Cameron.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2016/06/26/A-twist-of-fate-called-Brexit.html
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Europe Is the Creation of the Third World
By Hamid Dabashi
26 Jun 2016
In a famous passage in his now classic book, Wretched of the Earth (1961) Frantz Fanon wrote one of his most iconic phrases: "Europe is literally the creation of the Third World."
Why would he say that and what could that phrase actually mean? What will have remained of the very idea of "Europe" that now even the UK has opted to bid it farewell?
Let us answer these related questions with another more recent - more urgent, perhaps - question.
Why would Dalai Lama, evidently a kind, gentle, caring man, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, for millions around the world, Buddhist or otherwise, the very definition of tolerance and gentility say: "Europe, for example, Germany, cannot become an Arab country. Germany is Germany."
While finding his own remark entertaining, the Dalai Lama laughingly adds during his conversation with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "There are so many."
'Germany Cannot Become An Arab Country'
That is right: "Deutschland," he is reported to have said, "konne kein arabisches Land werden". This is not a neo-Nazi skinhead sharing these sentiments with a leading German newspaper. This is His Holiness, the Dalai Lama: "Germany cannot become an Arab country."
Germany is not an Arab country, nor is it even "in danger" of becoming an Arab country. But why would the Dalai Lama say such a thing - be so dismissive, derisive even, nervously sardonic of even the idea? What is it to him? He is neither a European nor an Arab.
Dalai Lama and the rest of Eurocentric universe around the world need this idea of 'Europe' as the figment of their own captured imagination ...
The answer to this question rests on Fanon's insight: "Europe is literally the creation of the Third World."
To be sure, Fanon meant it "literally", as he puts it bluntly: "Latin America, China, and Africa. From all these continents, under whose eyes Europe today raises up her tower of opulence, there has flowed out for centuries towards that same Europe diamonds and oil, silk and cotton, wood and exotic products. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World."
But there is also an even more potent, metaphoric, aspect to his iconic phrase, that the Third World has been definitive and instrumental in manufacturing the very idea, the metaphoric normativity, of "Europe", and with it the myth of "the West".
Partaking In the Eurocentric Universe
The Dalai Lama and the rest of Eurocentric universe around the world need this idea of "Europe" as the figment of their own captured imagination, the whitewashed epicentre of their own metaphoric cosmos.
He cannot imagine this metaphor of "Europe", which in his mind is all white, all Christian, all the civilised measure of our humanity, tinted with the presence of non-Europeans, Arab or otherwise.
He, in effect, partakes freely and is categorically invested in the unexamined metaphor of "Europe" beyond all reality and geography. In that assumption, he is not a racist at all, for his mental makeup is already racialised, a normative entrapment he can never decode.
This figment of imagination has nothing to do with the reality of Europe: fragmented along race, gender, and class; some welcoming, many resentful of the new immigrants and refugees.
Not just the reality of this wave of migration, or even the reality of European Muslims long before this wave, but the reality of Europe as fractured in its layered composition opens to much different horizons. Put them together, these varied realities map out a vastly different Europe than the one the Dalai Lama imagines.
Europe Is Changing For Good
The city of London has just elected its first Muslim mayor, just before the UK opted to exit the EU.
Yes, there was UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who, in order to prevent this from happening, tried to recreate sectarian hostility in London on the model of British colonial practices in India.
Yes, the new mayor had to shift to the right and denounce BDS before he could get elected. But elected he was: and on a merely symbolic and demographic register, this was an indication of what is dawning on the opening horizons.
The UK has now opted for nativism. Cameron has just announced his resignation.
Yes, there are nervous "European" philosophers (as they continue to insist in designating themselves) like Slavoj Zizek, or even more zealous Zionists like Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, or mass murderers like Anders Breivik, or politicians like Marine Le Pen, or Islamophobe atheists like Richard Dawkins, who fume and fumble at the sight of new Muslim immigrants.
But there are also other defiant voices like Alain Badiou's, who catch these retrogrades red-handed and whose visions are far more embracing of the newcomers.
Europe is changing, slowly but surely, self-imploding much quicker than the new immigrants and refugees would warrant it.
Muslim refugees are awakening Europe to its central paradox: both its racist foregrounding and its liberal illusions, and the force of this dialectic will forever alter the repressed memories of the thing that has called itself "Europe", and even more so "the West".
Refugees Are Liberators
Look at them closely: These refugees are liberators. They are liberating Europe from the deadpan myth of "the West". The reaction of nervous philosophers like Zizek, Levy, and Finkielkraut, as indeed the rise of nativism in UK, are symptomatic of a futile resistance to the full dimensions of a seismic change they are unable to see yet.
But change is inevitable, not so much under the pressure of refugees, but because of the bursting bubble of the myth of "Europe" itself that has long since exhausted its enabling emotive universe.
Today, the Dalai Lama and millions of other retrograde cartographers of our changing world will be disoriented and dizzy if they were to be denied "the European" figment of their own captured imagination. But tomorrow the creative consciousness of a radically different geography will inform and people our fragile earth.
The bursting of the myth of Europe and its contingent metaphor of "the West" does not bode well for "the Rest" either, for it spells out the end of all the binary illusions it has manufactured to believe itself more ardently, chief among them "the Islam" it has colonially manufactured to rule it better, aided and abetted, to be sure, by Muslims themselves.
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/06/europe-creation-world-160613063926420.html
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Lebanon And Jordan May Collapse Under A New Wave Of Refugees
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
26 June 2016
While Europe is tearing itself apart politically over a refugee crisis that they could easily handle if they agreed to work together, the countries which have done the actual heavy lifting in helping with the situation are genuinely suffering.
Turkey has been becoming more and more unstable over the past year. Much of that to do with a renewed Kurdish insurgency prompted by Ankara’s approach to Syria, but having to deal with upwards of 2.7 million refugees is certainly putting the resources of the Turkish state under strain. And much more worryingly, Jordan and Lebanon are creaking at the seams and may collapse under the weight of refugees.
Lebanon in particular has taken in between 1 and 1.5 million, in a country of less than 5 million – upwards of one fifth of the people in that country are now Syrian refugees, a larger proportion than anywhere else. And in a country with its own very troubled history of sectarian infighting, the pressure is starting to take its toll. So much so, that they no longer let Syrians in the country unless they can prove that they will move onto somewhere else next.
As we speak, the Syrian so-called “ceasefire” is melting away, and renewed violence may yet see another surge in refugee numbers. Even as in recent weeks more and more Syrian refugees have started contemplating heading back home in the war zone, as the situation in the refugee camps have deteriorated to where they are barely survivable.
Syria’s Neighbours
But all this is hardly making the news in the West. And it should. Amid the media kerfuffle and the rise of xenophobic nationalism in the EU, what is being missed is that Europe is having to deal with a negligible burden compared with Syria’s neighbours, and that if the situation carries on like this, we’ll not only have to cope with Syrian and Iraqi refugees, but before long, Lebanese too.
Amid the media kerfuffle and the rise of xenophobic nationalism in the EU, what is being missed is that Europe is having to deal with a negligible burden compared with Syria’s neighbours
Perhaps Jordanian and Kurdish on top, not long after. The countries of Eastern Europe have acted shamefully in this regard, and are in effect shoving their heads in the sand over what is to come. Britain and Denmark too. The initial response of Germany and Sweden, unlike it has been described in Western media, has been no more than a proportional response in the right direction, given the magnitude of the problem.
It was not over-the-top generous. It was what was required by the humanitarian situation – and also by the demographic problems that those countries have. But even there, reactionary forces have since blocked further action.
Strangely enough, for all there is to loathe about Turkish President Erdogan, in this situation he has done more than anyone for the refugees. More, even, than Angela Merkel. The Turks have invested billions of dollars in building facilities for the refugees – facilities I have visited myself in 2013, when I got a private tour by Governor Dalmaz, the PR special representative for Syrian refugees, to see some of them.
The cauldron of violence in Syria and Iraq is still boiling over. And it will continue to spill over waves of refugees for some time to come. Before long, if nothing is done, the countries who have borne most of the humanitarian burden may soon be destabilized themselves, aggravating the refugee crisis beyond our worst nightmares. How much longer will we contend to navelgaze about pitiful numbers in our economies which can easily absorb these people, while we stand idly by and allow the root causes of this crisis to get worse and worse?
Because as far as genuine solutions are concerned, we have nothing. No substantial plan to stem the conflict in Syria and Iraq. No plan to help Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan to cope with the financial stresses of the effort they are putting in. No plan to take some of the burden off them by taking in more refugees than those who can make it to our shores by boat. Nothing.
And if we choose to be complacent about the consequences because Lebanon and Jordan are countries far away, keep in mind which country is next in line on the brink of collapse, immediately after them: Greece.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2016/06/26/Lebanon-and-Jordan-may-collapse-under-a-new-wave-of-refugees.html
URL: https://newageislam.com/middle-east-press/twin-brothers-kill-their-parents,/d/107769