World Press On Laws Against Interfaith Marriages, Sexual Violence And Thanksgiving: New Age Islam's Selection, 27 November 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
27 November
2020
• In India, States Ruled By Modi’s Party Are
Enacting Laws Against Interfaith Marriages
By Zafar Aafaq
• Sexual Violence Is An Emblem Of Patriarchy In
The Guise Of Tradition
By Tasneem Tayeb
• Turkey On The Brain
By Gail Collins
• Thanksgiving Is A Celebration Of Freedom
By Judge Glock
• Pope Francis: A Crisis Reveals What Is In Our
Hearts
By Pope Francis
• Trump’s ‘Favorite Dictator’ Imprisoned My
Husband — To Test Joe Biden
By Jess Kelly
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In India, States Ruled By Modi’s Party Are
Enacting Laws Against Interfaith Marriages
By Zafar Aafaq
26th
November 2020
This week
Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, enacted a new law making
religious conversion for marriage a punishable offense, with imprisonment for
up to 10 years. The objective of the law is to put a curb on interfaith
marriages involving Muslim men and Hindu women.
The law
comes days after the announcement by the Chief Minister of the state Yogi
Adityanath that he will bring an end to “Love Jihad” – a bogus term to describe
a conspiracy theory that Muslim men hoodwink women into love and marry for
conversion to Islam.
He had
threatened Muslim men with violent consequences if they “hide their name and
identity and play with the honour of daughters and sisters.” Adityanath is a
firebrand Hindu monk who comes from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which
currently rules India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While the
law, titled Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion
Ordinance-2020, does not mention the “Love Jihad”, it says that marriages found
be solemnised for the purpose of conversion of women will be declared void. The
government says the law will bring “justice to women”. While issues of forced
marriages and forced religious conversions are a grave offense, there is
something more sinister to this new law, however.
The law is
a result of years of campaigning by Hindu right-wing groups based on
unsubstantiated claims that Muslim men are taught to seduce Hindu women into
love for the purpose of converting them to Islam. In 2013, months before the
general elections, the followers of BJP led by Amit Shah, now India’s Home
Minister, went door to door in the western region of the state to alarm local
Hindu women about “Love Jihad”.
The
campaign sowed seeds of religious discord and the result was bloody – more than
60 people, the majority of them Muslims, were killed in the communal riots in
the district of Muzaffarnagar.
The BJP
swept the elections and Modi ascended to power. Subsequently, in 2017, the
party won the elections in the state, and Adityanath was chosen as the Chief
Minister.
In 2019,
Modi was re-elected as the Prime Minister and the country’s drift toward the
right has assumed frightening speed. Since his start of the second term in
office, he has revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, passed a controversial
citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims, and laid the foundation of
a grand Hindu temple at a site where a historical mosque once stood.
Two more
states ruled by the BJP have decided to emulate Adityanath. On Wednesday Madhya
Pradesh decided to extend laws against conversions for marriage. Haryana,
another state ruled by the BJP, on Thursday announced the formation of a panel
to make a law regulating interfaith relationships. Moreover, two more BJP-ruled
states, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, have enacted such laws in 2017 and 2018
respectively.
The law
regulating interfaith marriages is the latest push to Hindu majoritarianism.
This week Netflix was drawn into legal trouble when Hindu activists filed a
complaint in the BJP ruled state of Madhya Pradesh in central India against a
series “Suitable Boy” over a scene depicting a Hindu woman and a Muslim man
kissing with a temple in the backdrop. The activists complained the scene hurt
their religious sentiments.
Similarly,
weeks ago a jewelry brand was forced to pull down a TV commercial showing a
happy Hindu daughter-in-law being welcomed into a Muslim family. Followers of
Hindu political groups launched an online campaign calling for a boycotting of
the brand for “promoting Love Jihad”.
But a
recent investigation by the police into the alleged cases of “Love Jihad” in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur city
found that in most cases, the decisions of Hindu women to marry Muslim men were
consensual. An anonymous police official quoted in a report by The Wire said
that the issue has been “exaggerated” by the state government.
Such laws
have evoked criticism from liberal sections of society and members of
opposition parties and minority communities, and the law is likely to be
challenged in court as experts say that it violates the right to equality, personality,
and nondiscrimination enshrined in the Indian Constitution.
“The law
goes against the rights given to the women to lead their private lives granted
by the Indian constitution,” said Kavita Krishnan, who joined Love Azad or
“Love is Free”, a campaign launched on Wednesday by activists to counter the
“Lies of Love Jihad”. “Such laws stoke hatred and deepen the communal divide”,
Krishnan stressed.
Two weeks
before the law was enacted, the state High Court overturned an earlier ruling
which had declared marriage for the sake of conversion as illegal. The court
said that state intervention into the personal relationship “would constitute a
serious encroachment into the right to freedom of choice of the two
individuals.”
Krishnan,
however, appealed to the people to not wait for court intervention and instead
join the “Love is Free” campaign and “fulfill their responsibility to protect
the freedoms enjoyed by the people.”
vibe.com/muslim-current-affairs-news/in-india-states-ruled-by-modis-party-are-enacting-laws-against-interfaith-marriages?utm_
-----
Sexual Violence Is An Emblem Of Patriarchy In
The Guise Of Tradition
By Tasneem Tayeb
November
26, 2020
To truly end sexual violence against women and girls, we have to break
the cycle of patriarchy masquerading as tradition. Photo: Kazi Tahsin Agaz
Apurbo
-----
A
Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (Banbeis) report
from last year suggests that in 2018, girls formed 54 percent of the total
number of students at the secondary level. In 1999, it was 43 percent. In
another indicator of progress in women's life, maternal mortality has also
reduced significantly. According to World Bank, the country's maternal
mortality was 434 per 100,000 live births in 2000, which plummeted to 173 per
100,000 live births in 2017. The World Bank data further indicated improvements
in female labour force participation, which in 2020 stands at 36.42 percent, up
from 24.73 percent in 1990.
While these
are successes worth acknowledging, our development is severely hampered by
violence against women and girls, especially sexual violence, which has
intensified in recent times. According to an estimate of Bangladesh Mahila
Parishad (BMP), sexual violence against women doubled between 2010 and 2019.
Let's take the number of rape incidents for example: in 2010, the number stood
at 940, which more than doubled to 1855 in 2019. Rape is just one of the many
forms of sexual violence women and children are forced to endure every day.
Marital
rape, meanwhile, is an unacknowledged form of sexual violence unleashed on
women, and unfortunately on girls too. Hundreds and thousands of women are
forced to endure rape by their own husbands. And why? Because Section 375 of
the Penal Code states, "Sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the
wife not being under 13 years of age, is not rape."
But why
would a girl be married at 13 in the first place? "… if a marriage is solemnised
in such a manner and under such special circumstances as may be prescribed by
rules in the best interests of the minor, at the directions of the court and
with consent of the parents or the guardian of the minor, as the case may be,
it shall not be deemed to be an offence under this act." This is clearly
stated in Section 19 of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, which fails to
specify which scenarios qualify as "special circumstances." So, with
no clear indication on what special circumstances mean, our girls remain
vulnerable to the curse of child marriage and sexual exploitation at the hands
of their husbands, who have been taught that wives are their possessions to do
with them as they please, and to whom the concept of consent is alien.
Often these
young girls are subjected to forced coitus and sexual perversions, leading to
significant damage to their reproductive health, not to mention the mental
trauma they endure. The tragic story of 14-year-old Nurnahar, who died in
October this year, after suffering from gynaecological complications following
sexual intercourse with her 34-year-old husband and subsequent lack of
treatment, is a case in point. When the teenager reported that she was
suffering from genital bleeding, instead of immediately consulting a
gynaecologist, the husband kept having sex with her, causing injury and
agonising pain. She was given medicine from a local kabiraj, and only when it
was too late did the family decide to seek medical help. The girl succumbed to
her injuries. The mother-in-law suggested that she was possessed by demonic
spirits which caused the bleeding. Despite being a woman—who must have
understood what the little girl would have endured—the mother-in-law chose to
overlook Nurnahar's trauma, and instead blamed her for her misfortune. Although
the girl's family has reportedly filed a complaint with the local police
station, chances of justice being served in this case are slim. She was 14
after all—meaning she wasn't raped by legal definition, even if she was.
There are
men—fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, in-laws, cousins, friends,
acquaintances, strangers—who inflict sexual violence on girls and women every
day. And then there are women—mothers, sisters, aunties, grandmothers, female
relatives and friends—who discourage other women and girls from raising their
voice against such brutality. It is this systematic suppression of women's
voices by their own family and close associates, and sometimes by other women,
that is emboldening the perpetrators of sexual violence.
The archaic
and myopic definition of rape remains another major enabler of this heinous
crime. The definition of rape in our law is confined to penile-vaginal
penetration. So, if a man forcefully inserts an object into a woman through the
vaginal opening, it would not be considered rape, because it has not been a
penile penetration. But we have seen incidents of women being subjected to
sexual abuse with objects. And how are those cases classified?
Although
the government has increased the highest punishment for rape to the death
penalty, it is not expected to result in significant change, as the rate of
disposal of rape cases remains extremely low. An Amnesty International report
citing data from the government's One Stop Crisis Centre suggests that between
2001 and July 2020, only 3.56 percent of cases filed under the Women and
Children Repression Prevention Act 2000 have resulted in a court judgment, and
only 0.37 percent of cases have ended with convictions. The Amnesty
International report further added, "Local women's rights organisation
Naripokkho examined the incidents of reported rape cases in six districts
between 2011 and 2018 and found that out of 4,372 cases, only five people were
convicted."
While these
statistics and realities portray the problems that are enabling sexual violence
against women, the bigger problem lies in our perspective.
Sexual
violence against women is symptomatic of a patriarchal society refusing to act
in its best interest. It is happening because of a lack of empowerment, because
in an equitable society, this cannot happen. We are living in a society that,
unfortunately, still sees a woman as an object that can be dominated, sexually
and otherwise. And it is through this sexual dominance over women that the men in
our country portray their power and ego.
And this
should be a major concern for the policymakers, because this is a reflection of
a fundamental disequilibrium: women's empowerment. The ties between economic
growth and women's empowerment merits broader discussion, but suffice it to
say, their connection is well-established. If we cannot empower women with
sovereignty over their own bodies, how do we hope to give them control over
their own destiny and that of the nation?
To truly
end sexual violence against women, we have to break the cycle of patriarchy
masquerading as tradition. We have to rise above the petty urge of the ego that
wants to dominate, not just for vanity or the slogan of an equitable society,
but for our own growth as a nation.
-----
Tasneem Tayeb is a columnist for The Daily
Star.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/closer-look/news/sexual-violence-emblem-patriarchy-the-guise-tradition-2001021
-----
Turkey on the Brain
By Gail Collins
Nov. 25,
2020
So, what do
you think Donald Trump is giving thanks for this year?
A) Peace
and good fellowship throughout the land.
B) His
thrilling campaign to overturn the election.
C)
Melania’s new blond look.
I know,
you’re hoping it’s going to be C. But the man is obsessed with his re-election resurrection.
“One thing
has become clear these last few days, I am the American People’s ALL-TIME
favorite President,” he wrote to his mailing list, a very large group of
citizens who’ve gotten hundreds of missives along these lines since Election
Day.
The
all-important bottom line of this correspondence is that everyone should send
Donald Trump $5 right away. And, of course, more is OK.
In his real
outside life — the one he’ll be returning to in just a few weeks — Trump is
definitely in need of those fivers. He owed tons of money when he first ran for
office. Now a $400 million bill is coming due. And his prize customer, the
Republican faithful, is looking a bit shaky. Republicans spent over $23 million
at Trump-owned businesses since he started his campaign for president five
years ago. That’s more than 100 times as much as in the five years prior. And
not necessarily a sum that will continue through his Mar-a-Lago exile.
Something
needs to be done! And you cannot help but notice that currently, Trump’s one
absolute prize Guernsey of a cash cow seems to be his postelection re-election
campaign, “Save America.”
“Friend,”
he asks in another mass email, “Will you allow the CORRUPT Democrats to try to
STEAL this Election and impart their RADICAL agenda on our Country? Or will you
step UP and DEFEND your Country?” It’s both a plea for cash and a reminder that
when the nation looks back on the Trump era it will see a time when capital
letters ruled the earth.
But if an
eager reader decided to send “Save America” a donation to “protect the
integrity of this Election,” it’s hard to know where it’d go. According to an
email sent under Eric’s name, the money is earmarked for “legal teams in each
critical state.” Which is certainly possible. Although experts say the money
could also pay consulting fees for the kids. Or even the kennel fees for the
family pet, if only Trump didn’t hate dogs.
(This last
bit of information has nothing to do with Save America. It’s just a sneaky way
to work in another reminder that Joe Biden has two shepherds, Major, who came
from a rescue center, and Champ.)
Back to the
money.
Our
president does have trouble hanging onto cash, whether it’s his or ours. The
guy who vowed to eliminate the national debt if elected is leaving office in a
fiscal year that recorded the biggest one-year debt figure ever, $3.1 trillion.
And during the entire glorious four years, the national red ink went from $14.4
trillion to $21.1 trillion.
The return
of Trump to his business empire is not going to solve its problems. First,
because he seems very bad at handling money, and second, because he doesn’t
really intend to go back to a civilian life. If he did, history suggests he’d
only succeed in building another tower of overdue bills.
While the
alleged Trump agenda right now is overturning the national election results,
clearly the real plan is to gear up for a comeback in 2024. It’s a pretty
dramatic goal. There has been only one president in U.S. history who lost
re-election and then ran and won four years later. That would be Grover
Cleveland.
If you’re
ever talking about Trump’s political ambition, be sure to refer to it as
“pulling a Grover.”
Almost
everything Trump does to challenge the election returns or raise money for his
next presidential campaign can trickle over to something more personal and
short-term. For instance, is he going to try to collect cash for a presidential
library? That’s normal for a person in his position. Even though the first noun
you connect with Donald Trump is not “contemplation” or “scholarly research.”
Or even
“book.”
It’s become
expected for former presidents to raise money for a place to display their
memorabilia, host gatherings and sponsor research. But if you get a request for
a Donald Trump Library contribution, do not feel compelled to follow through.
Even if they offer you a free copy of Ivanka’s “Women Who Work” or Donald Jr.’s
magnum opus on “How the Left Thrives on Hate.”
Short-term,
of course, it’s perfectly OK to blot this out. Spend the holidays on the easy
stuff. Biden’s dogs. Don Jr.’s career options. And the inauguration — how do
you think Trump will behave? Defeated presidents usually go to see their
opponent get sworn in. Even Herbert Hoover, who really, really resented
Franklin Roosevelt’s victory, rode with F.D.R. from the White House to the
Capitol. Didn’t talk much, just sort of sulked and stared. F.D.R. found other
ways to keep himself busy as he rode through the rapturous cheering crowd.
But
Hoover-Trump is not a great comparison. Unless you can imagine Donald spending
his post-presidential career working on famine relief projects.
Trump
certainly regards himself now as a once and future candidate, and a recent
Politico poll showed 53 percent of Republicans are ready to vote for him in the
2024 presidential primaries. Twelve percent prefer Mike Pence and 8 percent opt
for Donald Jr.
I hope
Pence is aware that only 4 percent of his party regards him as a better
potential president than Junior. Really, if you want to invest in the future of
any Trump minions, I’d go for a line of Rudy Giuliani hair products.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/opinion/trump-giuliani-reelection-campaign.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
------
Thanksgiving Is a Celebration of Freedom
By Judge Glock
Nov. 26,
2020
As with so much
in our lives, Thanksgiving has become a cultural battleground. Politicians and
pundits debate whether we should use the day to memorialize the tragedy of the
Indians or to celebrate the new liberties of the Pilgrims in America.
Yet the
true origins of Thanksgiving have little to do with the Pilgrims and the
Indians, and everything to do with the American triumph against slavery. Far
from being divisive and outmoded, Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday for our
modern era, demonstrating how we can both uphold and renew our traditions. Most
important, Thanksgiving reminds us of how America took its earlier promise of
freedom and used it to end the stain of slavery.
In early
America, colonies set aside special days of thanks to “Providence” or “Almighty
God.” Such days of thanksgiving were usually for good harvests or military
successes, like the one proclaimed by the Continental Congress in December 1777
after Gen. George Washington’s victory at the Battle of Saratoga.
But the
idea of a regular and national Thanksgiving Day was the work of one woman.
Sarah Josepha Hale had already ensured her everlasting fame by composing the
rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” when she decided to make a campaign for a
thanksgiving holiday. Beginning in 1846, Mrs. Hale wrote letters to every
president asking for an annual day of thanks to unite the nation. Her magazine
articles spread the campaign across the country.
President
Abraham Lincoln finally took Mrs. Hale up on the idea. It was October 1863,
just after the Battle of Gettysburg, when Mr. Lincoln declared a national “day
of Thanksgiving” to celebrate the Union’s victories in the Civil War. His
proclamation said it was “fit and proper” that the country should give thanks
for success in a war that would eventually mean “a large increase of freedom.”
The timing
of the first Thanksgiving is important. Earlier in the year, Mr. Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation had turned the Civil War into a battle against
slavery. Exactly one week before the first Thanksgiving, the president
delivered a speech to commemorate soldiers who had died in that war.
In the
Gettysburg Address, Mr. Lincoln argued that the Declaration of Independence had
created an America “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal.” He said it was “fitting and proper” to consecrate the battlefield to
those soldiers who had fought and died for that ideal. Mr. Lincoln knew that
the ideal had not been fully realized, but he hoped that the Civil War would
ensure a “new birth of freedom” for those for whom the promises of the
declaration had not yet been fulfilled.
Sarah
Josepha Hale would have appreciated her Thanksgiving holiday’s being turned
into a celebration of the battle against slavery. Her first novel, “Northwood:
Or, Life North and South,” published in 1827, was one of the earliest
denouncing the sins of slavery. In it, she explained not only how slavery
destroyed African-American lives, but also how it corrupted the life and morals
of the masters as well.
Mrs. Hale
spent years writing other articles and stories about the baleful effects of
slavery. Like Mr. Lincoln, she also wrote about how the Civil War could reunite
the nation on a new and higher plane of freedom.
After the
war, white Southerners remained suspicious of the “Yankee abolitionist holiday.”
When early Reconstruction-era governors proclaimed Thanksgiving Days in the
South, white people ignored them, even while Black people and Republicans
feasted. It took decades before Thanksgiving became a truly national holiday.
It also took decades before most of the country layered on the tradition of the
Pilgrims and Indians as part of that holiday.
A
Thanksgiving celebrated by former slaves and abolitionists is one that we too
can embrace. Those of us exulting in the day don’t have to ignore our nation’s
sins. Yet we can remember that our nation was founded on a peerless ideal, one
that promised the expansion of freedom to ever greater numbers of people. For
the long and difficult struggle to achieve that ideal, and for our many
successes along the way, we can and should be thankful.
-----
Judge Glock is an economic historian and senior
policy adviser for the Cicero Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/thanksgiving-holiday-history.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
----
Pope Francis: A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our
Hearts
By Pope Francis
Nov. 26,
2020
In this
past year of change, my mind and heart have overflowed with people. People I
think of and pray for, and sometimes cry with, people with names and faces,
people who died without saying goodbye to those they loved, families in
difficulty, even going hungry, because there’s no work.
Sometimes,
when you think globally, you can be paralyzed: There are so many places of
apparently ceaseless conflict; there’s so much suffering and need. I find it
helps to focus on concrete situations: You see faces looking for life and love
in the reality of each person, of each people. You see hope written in the
story of every nation, glorious because it’s a story of daily struggle, of
lives broken in self-sacrifice. So rather than overwhelm you, it invites you to
ponder and to respond with hope.
These are
moments in life that can be ripe for change and conversion. Each of us has had
our own “stoppage,” or if we haven’t yet, we will someday: illness, the failure
of a marriage or a business, some great disappointment or betrayal. As in the
Covid-19 lockdown, those moments generate a tension, a crisis that reveals what
is in our hearts.
In every
personal “Covid,” so to speak, in every “stoppage,” what is revealed is what
needs to change: our lack of internal freedom, the idols we have been serving,
the ideologies we have tried to live by, the relationships we have neglected.
When I got
really sick at the age of 21, I had my first experience of limit, of pain and
loneliness. It changed the way I saw life. For months, I didn’t know who I was
or whether I would live or die. The doctors had no idea whether I’d make it
either. I remember hugging my mother and saying, “Just tell me if I’m going to
die.” I was in the second year of training for the priesthood in the diocesan
seminary of Buenos Aires.
I remember
the date: Aug. 13, 1957. I got taken to a hospital by a prefect who realized
mine was not the kind of flu you treat with aspirin. Straightaway they took a
liter and a half of water out of my lungs, and I remained there fighting for my
life. The following November they operated to take out the upper right lobe of
one of the lungs. I have some sense of how people with Covid-19 feel as they
struggle to breathe on a ventilator.
I remember
especially two nurses from this time. One was the senior ward matron, a
Dominican sister who had been a teacher in Athens before being sent to Buenos
Aires. I learned later that following the first examination by the doctor,
after he left she told the nurses to double the dose of medication he had
prescribed — basically penicillin and streptomycin — because she knew from
experience I was dying. Sister Cornelia Caraglio saved my life. Because of her
regular contact with sick people, she understood better than the doctor what
they needed, and she had the courage to act on her knowledge.
Another
nurse, Micaela, did the same when I was in intense pain, secretly prescribing
me extra doses of painkillers outside my due times. Cornelia and Micaela are in
heaven now, but I’ll always owe them so much. They fought for me to the end,
until my eventual recovery. They taught me what it is to use science but also
to know when to go beyond it to meet particular needs. And the serious illness
I lived through taught me to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others.
This theme
of helping others has stayed with me these past months. In lockdown I’ve often
gone in prayer to those who sought all means to save the lives of others. So
many of the nurses, doctors and caregivers paid that price of love, together
with priests, and religious and ordinary people whose vocations were service.
We return their love by grieving for them and honoring them.
Whether or
not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is
better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that
call. That’s why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their
doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door,
who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more
what we desire to instill by our preaching.
They are
the antibodies to the virus of indifference. They remind us that our lives are
a gift and we grow by giving of ourselves, not preserving ourselves but losing
ourselves in service.
With some
exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their
people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The
exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of
mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments
acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.
Yet some
groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel
restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of
their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal
freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good
for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to
respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.
It is all
too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom
— and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge
everything.
The
coronavirus crisis may seem special because it affects most of humankind. But
it is special only in how visible it is. There are a thousand other crises that
are just as dire, but are just far enough from some of us that we can act as if
they don’t exist. Think, for example, of the wars scattered across different
parts of the world; of the production and trade in weapons; of the hundreds of
thousands of refugees fleeing poverty, hunger and lack of opportunity; of
climate change. These tragedies may seem distant from us, as part of the daily
news that, sadly, fails to move us to change our agendas and priorities. But
like the Covid-19 crisis, they affect the whole of humanity.
Look at us
now: We put on face masks to protect ourselves and others from a virus we can’t
see. But what about all those other unseen viruses we need to protect ourselves
from? How will we deal with the hidden pandemics of this world, the pandemics
of hunger and violence and climate change?
If we are
to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let
ourselves be touched by others’ pain. There’s a line in Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Hyperion” that speaks to me, about how the
danger that threatens in a crisis is never total; there’s always a way out: “Where the danger is, also grows the
saving power.” That’s the genius in the human story: There’s always a way to
escape destruction. Where humankind has to act is precisely there, in the
threat itself; that’s where the door opens.
This is a
moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want,
what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed
of.
God asks us
to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of
the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies
that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life:
to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue
with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the
decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design
better ways of living together on this earth.
The pandemic
has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more
divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to
focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious. Our fears are exacerbated
and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over
society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people
with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being
of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to
our own well-being.
To come out
of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we
have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved
alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity.
Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the
call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this
solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.
----
Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church
and the bishop of Rome. This essay has been adapted from his new book “Let Us
Dream: The Path to a Better Future,” written with Austen Ivereigh.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/pope-francis-covid.html?
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Trump’s ‘Favorite Dictator’ Imprisoned My
Husband — to Test Joe Biden
By Jess Kelly
Nov. 25,
2020
LONDON — I
missed the first call from Karim. I was watching TV, and my phone was on
silent. The previous day, one of my husband’s colleagues from the Egyptian
Initiative for Personal Rights — one of the last remaining human rights
organizations in Egypt — had been arrested. But Karim reassured me: He was
taking a few days’ break on the beach; he said there was no need to worry. He
always tells me that.
Two months
ago, Karim Ennarah and I were married in a short ceremony at Cairo’s Ministry
of Justice. Whenever Karim enters government property, he gets nervous — which
is understandable. He is a human rights defender in a country where some 60,000
people have been arrested as political prisoners. The wedding had taken months
to arrange, and this was the final bureaucratic hurdle. Just as we were about
to sign the marriage contract, the I.T. system went down and a Justice Ministry
official warned us that it could take hours or days to get it running again. My
Egyptian visa was going to expire the next day; a long delay would have sent us
back to square one. When the computers rumbled back on a few minutes later, it
felt like a sign. We walked out of the building as husband and wife, ready to
start a new life.
When I
finally returned Karim’s call on Monday, Nov. 16, that life rapidly fell apart.
He told me that a team of police officers had just been at his mother’s house
to arrest him. “I’m so sorry, I should have left Egypt sooner, I love you so
much,” he said, his voice breaking. I felt my stomach twist and started
shivering. Two days later, state security forces arrived at a beachside
restaurant where Karim was eating — it was one of his favorites, on account of
the coconut ice cream — and took him away. The news hit me while I was cycling
home from the dentist. I slumped over my bike crying.
It was only
later that evening that I realized that there was a direct connection between
the American presidential election and my sobbing by the side of the road in
East London. As the director of the Criminal Justice Unit at the Egyptian
Initiative for Personal Rights, Karim has spent years documenting arbitrary
detention, state torture and mass executions carried out by the government of
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a former army general who came to power in a
military coup. Karim did this work at the same time as the United States
offered Mr. Sisi aid, arms and political support.
It is no
coincidence that Karim has been arrested just as President Trump — who once
called Mr. Sisi his “favorite dictator” — is on his way out of office, and the
Biden administration is preparing to assume power.
Karim’s
arrest is a deliberate and provocative attempt to “move the goal posts” ahead
of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Mr. Biden has vowed: “No more ‘blank checks’” for
Mr. Sisi. The Egyptian government, which receives $1.4 billion a year from
Washington — more than any other country bar Israel — is trying to call his
bluff and prove that these threats won’t stop it from arresting even the most
prominent activists in Egypt.
Karim,
along with his colleagues Mohammed Basheer and Gasser Abdel-Razek — the
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights’ director and a father figure to Karim,
who lost his father when he was young — are being used as pawns in a game of
geopolitical brinkmanship.
All are
being held at Tora, one of Egypt’s most notorious prisons, where Amnesty
International warns, the conditions are “cruel” and “inhumane.” But for their
partners, their children and their many friends all over the world who have
mobilized to demand their freedom, this is not a game. On Monday, Gasser was
briefly allowed to see his lawyers and informed them he was being kept in
solitary confinement in a cold cell without winter clothing, and sleeping on a
metal bed with no mattress; his hair had been forcibly shaved. Since Karim
entered Tora last Thursday, we have yet to have had any contact with him.
Brave,
compassionate and deeply committed to the freedom and welfare of his fellow
citizens, Karim is the kind of person Egypt should be building its future
around. Instead, he and his colleagues face trumped-up charges, including the
ludicrous accusation of being members of a terrorist group. We are terrified
that they may soon join the ever-swelling ranks of those who disappear into
Egypt’s jails indefinitely.
The work
that the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights does is praised
internationally, and earlier this month the organization hosted diplomats from
13 Western countries, including Britain, France and Canada, to brief them on
the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt. Karim tried to downplay the
significance of the meeting to me, but I could tell he was excited; that
morning he sent me a picture of the suit he was wearing. It now seems like that
meeting was the trigger for the subsequent arrests.
The
Egyptian government wants to send the message that despite paying lip service
to human rights concerns, its international allies — including Mr. Biden and
his new administration — would never dare to actually fight for them. The
moment has come to prove them wrong.
Next year,
Karim was planning to move to London to live with me. I couldn’t wait to have
him by my side. In three weeks, Congress will vote on whether it should
continue funneling American taxpayer money toward a dictatorship that uses it
to jail innocent people like my husband and separate them from their loved
ones. I urge them to do the right thing. When facing criticism for cozying up
to tyrants, politicians often defend themselves by insisting that this is the
price of being able to exert influence when it matters. It matters now.
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Jess Kelly is a documentary filmmaker focused
on the Middle East.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/opinion/egypt-arrests-activists.html?
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