World Press On Love Jihad Conspiracy, Indian Muslims And Faulty Definition Of Antisemitism: New Age Islam's Selection, 3 December 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
3 December
2020
• The Hateful Love ‘Jihad’ Conspiracy In India
Is Going Mainstream
By Rana Ayyub
• Indian Muslims Want A Secular India – Here’s
Why
By Nitin Saxena
• The Government Should Not Impose A Faulty
Definition Of Antisemitism On Universities
By David Feldman
• A Turkish-German Couple May Save Us From The
Virus. So Why Is Germany Uneasy?
By Anna Sauerbrey
• Let’s Call U.S. Religious Freedom What It Is:
Privileging Of Superstition
By Rick Snedeker
• A Responsible Withdrawal From Afghanistan
New York Times Editorial Board
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The Hateful Love ‘Jihad’ Conspiracy In India Is
Going Mainstream
By Rana Ayyub
November
29, 2020
In the year
preceding the national elections in India in 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra
Modi rose to power, India witnessed a brutal episode of communal carnage in the
state of Uttar Pradesh. More than 60 people were killed, women were gang-raped,
and more than 50,000 people were displaced, a majority of them Muslims. The
violence was triggered by false rumors of a “love jihad” — what Hindu
nationalists say is an alleged plot by Muslim youths to woo and convert Hindu
girls — and of Muslims consuming beef. These events, rather than hurting Modi’s
ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the state, were followed by his massive
electoral victory.
That
explains why India is now trying to institutionalize this kind of bigotry,
violence and resentment.
On Nov. 24,
Uttar Pradesh approved a “love jihad” order criminalizing religious conversions
by marriage with jail terms of up to 10 years. The order would also nullify
unions in which a woman changes her religion to marry. The state’s chief
minister is the radical Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath. Last month, at a rally, he
lashed out against “love jihad” and said men who “conceal their names and play
with the honor of daughters and sisters” should prepare for death. Another
BJP-ruled state, Madhya Pradesh, has included a five-year jail term for priests
who sanction interfaith marriages between couples.
In recent
weeks and days, the Indian right has been waging a campaign against any
depictions of interfaith relations, including attacking Netflix for showing a
kissing scene between a Muslim boy and a Hindu girl. These attacks keep feeding
the dangerous “love jihad” conspiracy theory, the proponents of which seek to
ultimately constrain and restrict the freedom of Hindu women and further
demonize Muslims in India.
Videos of
Hindu vigilantes beating up Muslim boys for allegedly falling in love with
Hindu girls once generated universal condemnation. Now these attacks are
gaining legitimacy.
In a
country whose guiding principle was love and respect for a plurality of views,
faiths and cultures, the ruling party’s attacks on interfaith love to
consolidate the support of Hindu nationalists are part of Modi’s broader
assault on our once-vibrant democracy. We live in a country where a famous
Muslim actor such as Saif Ali Khan has to make a statement with obvious but
necessary proclamations such as, “We come with our mix. To deny this is to
cheat us of our inheritance. ... Intermarriage is not jihad. Intermarriage is
India.”
The
syncretic inheritance that Khan talks about has become an eyesore for Hindu
nationalists who like to stoke fears of Muslim dominance over Hindus. But their
attacks are not just against Islam.
A
high-level functionary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological
fountainhead of Modi’s party, told me that Christian evangelists like Mother
Teresa and Graham Staines, who helped lower-caste people in India with their
charity organizations, were actually part of a campaign to spread Christianity
in India under the guise of helping its poor. Staines and his two young
children were burned alive in 1999 by a group of Hindu nationalists in the
state of Orissa for allegedly spreading their faith among gullible,
unsuspecting natives.
This hatred
is now taking new shape on social media, television and family WhatsApp groups.
Recently, after a wave of online hate, an ad by the jewelry brand Tanishq had
to be withdrawn for showing a Muslim family celebrating Hindu customs and
traditions to make a pregnant Hindu daughter-in-law feel loved. India under
Modi is regressing dangerously to an era when women were deprived of their
agency and their right to fall in love with someone of their choice. It is
regressing to a country where values promoting communal amity are seen as a
stumbling block on the road to establishing a Hindu nation.
This
fundamental objection to love stems from a regime that has used hate as its
guiding force to stay in power. It is in the interest of the world’s largest
democracy that we love each other. We must reclaim our glorious nation from
fundamentalists who are polluting India with this air of toxicity that has
overwhelmed the country.
------
Rana Ayyub is an Indian journalist and author
of “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/28/hateful-love-jihad-conspiracy-india-is-going-mainstream/
-----
Indian Muslims Want A Secular India – Here’s
Why
By Nitin Saxena
01 December
2020
TTT-New
Delhi: It is time that Islam be
‘re-understood’ and its philosophical delicacies be brought under the spotlight
according to Indian Muslims.
Though this
modern crusade started two decades ago in the Western world with intellectuals
penning books on the subject, their work has largely been limited to the upper
echelons of educated society and researchers in India, until now.
In India of
late, the book ‘The Scientific Muslim’ is a best seller and is already creating
murmurs among the people, particularly among Indian Muslims, by suggesting to
them a new way in understanding the Quran.
Written by
former Vice Chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Dr. Parvaiz
Aslam, the book marks the mature assimilation of the interpretative
perspectives of imaging a Muslim.
‘The
Scientific Muslim’ is a lucid narrative correcting the outlandish beliefs of
staunch religious preachers, who, in their bankruptcy of righteous observations
and truthful understanding of God’s communicative signs, have stood silently
witnessing the communal trenches dug all around, making societal harmony a pit
for inter-faith ‘animosity’ among mankind.
The time is
ripe to spread worldwide the accurate meaning of the Quran which highlights
nature’s friendliness to man.
The word
‘Muslim’ has to be ripped apart from the mistaken image that appears in the
minds of people of other faiths, says author Dr. Mohammed Aslam Parvaiz, who in
the first few pages of his book clarifies that ‘anything and everything,
including human beings, who follow divine laws and orders set for, and sent to
them, is a Muslim.
The book
stresses the pursuit of divine guidance that itself can purge people and
society which is applicable to all religions. On the other hand it gives a
logical insight into Muslims’ ‘backwardness‘ in India.
One former
broadcast journalist from New Zealand, now working as an academic in India,
Albeena Abaas, is a crusader of secularism and against the fanaticism of any
religion.
Talking to
The Taiwan Times, she said that it was very unfortunate that only 10-15 percent
of the young Muslims falling between the ages of 18 and 25 knew what the Quran
is all about.
This may go
for other religions as well with regards to their respective holy books.
Albeena
pointed out that the use of the bindi (the red dot on the forehead above the
eye-brows) or wearing colours other than white is not ‘desired’ by brides
according to religion, but it happens anyway.
“Many
Muslim brides wear red bridal attire. In New Zealand, sarees (a five metre
cloth draped around the body by Hindu women) were worn by a large percentage of
the Muslim female population. Apt time
to forestall association of dresses with religion,” she said.
Renowned
Indian journalist Seema Mustafa, on the other hand, in her memoir ‘Azadi’s
(freedom’s) Daughter’ laments on the erosion of a tolerant ethos that has been
replaced by demonic inter-religion animosity.
Lensman
Mohammed Jaan expressed grief over the rift which, he said, was the handiwork
of empty minds nestling in a wrongly-founded belief which sparked riotous
conditions in India between Hindus and Muslims.
“The
sufferers are generally the people who don’t advocate this sort of divide,” he
added.
Author of
several books, Ashwin Sanghi, states in his article in a newspaper, Swarajya,
that the current Muslim leadership is identified with the firebrand oratory of
political leaders like Asaduddin Owaisi (a political leader in India known for
his fiery speeches against the government) and Tablighis (a group of people
following an Islamic missionary movement).
Echoing
somewhat similar sentiments, a tailor, Wasi Ahmed, said that people don’t talk
about the great Muslim monuments in India which have been revenue spinners.
“Why pick up only the bad points among my community,” he said.
Another book,
Why I am not a Muslim, written by Ibn Waaraq claims that ‘every Muslim will
have to face the challenge of the scientific developments of the last hundred
and fifty years.’
Waaraq,
quoting L’Islam en Questions (Grasset, 1986) makes it clear that ‘majority of
Arab intellectuals fervently advocate a secular state’.
And today,
around the nation, Indian Muslims can vouch for a secular India which, they
say, it has long been.
But as
the black sheep in the faith community,
things have turned sour.
https://thetaiwantimes.com/indian-muslims-want-a-secular-india-heres-why/7638
------
The Government Should Not Impose A Faulty
Definition Of Antisemitism On Universities
By David Feldman
2 Dec 2020
We all know
how the path to hell is paved. But it is a warning worth repeating for Gavin
Williamson. The secretary of state for education intends to rid universities in
England of antisemitism, but his intervention not only threatens to provoke
strife and confusion – it also places academic freedom and free speech on campus
at risk.
In October,
Williamson wrote to all university vice-chancellors “requesting” they adopt a
particular definition of antisemitism: the “working definition” promulgated by
the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016. Williamson is
not the first minister to write to universities on this matter, but he has been
more forceful than his predecessors. His letter demands action by Christmas,
and threatens swingeing measures against refusenik institutions that later
suffer antisemitic incidents. He threatens to remove funding and the power to
award degrees from universities that do not share his faith in the efficacy of
the IHRA working definition.
This is
misguided, for a number of reasons. First, it misconceives the task
universities face. As shown in a report released last week by Universities UK –
Tackling Racial Harassment in Higher Education – structural racism in
universities is profound, and racial harassment on campus is widespread. These
are problems that universities must address. The imposed adoption of the IHRA
working definition will not meet this challenge. It will, however, privilege
one group over others by giving them additional protections, and in doing so
will divide minorities against each other. For this reason alone, Williamson
should pause and consider how best to protect students and university staff
from racism broadly as well as from antisemitism.
Williamson’s
strategically ill-considered letter to vice-chancellors is based on two
mistaken assumptions about the fight against antisemitism. First, it asserts
the IHRA working definition provides a “straightforward” way for universities
to show that they do not tolerate antisemitism. Second, it claims that
universities that fail to adopt the definition reveal they are willing to
tolerate antisemitism. Neither of these claims is true. The IHRA working
definition is anything but straightforward, and universities already have some
tools to deal with antisemitism.
Universities
operate under the Equality Act; they also have internal policies and procedures
designed to address discrimination, harassment and victimisation. The damning
verdict of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s recent report on the
Labour party provided a clear demonstration that the universalist principles
gathered in the Equality Act can be used to hold powerful institutions to
account. But instead of demanding that universities review and improve their
toolkit to address racism in all its dimensions, the secretary of state insists
they use a niche widget for antisemitism alone: one that even its friends
concede is not a precision instrument.
It is a
puzzling choice, but one that becomes comprehensible once we see that the IHRA
working definition acquired symbolic importance in the struggle over antisemitism
in the Labour party. Labour’s initial rejection of the definition has led many
to regard the working definition as a symbol – a litmus test of whether or not
an individual or an organisation really opposes antisemitism or just plays lip
service to the goal. Symbols are important, but they are no substitute for
carefully constructed measures to combat antisemitism and other racisms.
In fact,
the IHRA working definition “was never intended to be a campus hate-speech
code”, as one of its original authors has explained. It was drafted as a tool
for data collectors, although it has rarely been used in this way. But it is
one thing for monitoring agencies to adopt the working definition as a rule of
thumb; imposing it on universities, which have a duty under law to uphold
academic freedom and free speech within the law, is something altogether
different.
The working
definition chiefly consists of a woolly core statement – “antisemitism is a
certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred of Jews” – and a
list of examples that “could, taking into account the overall context”, be
instances of antisemitism. The examples cover a range of topics, but six of the
11 deal with discourse on Israel. And it is the emphasis on Israel that is the
focus of criticism from the definition’s critics and enthusiasm from its
advocates.
The pros
and cons of the working definition have been debated on many occasions. For
some it provides helpful guidelines; for others it inhibits legitimate
criticism of Israel’s policies and practices. But in the light of the secretary
of state’s letter, the key point is that it is impossible to know which of
these interpretations is correct. And in this context, uncertainty brings
danger.
According
to the working definition, one example of behaviour that “could” be antisemitic
is “applying double standards” to Israel. Some prominent advocacy organisations
and political figures accuse those who support a boycott against Israel of
doing just this. This is consequential for universities because a portion of
students and staff support the boycott movement. So, taking this as a case in
point, are boycotts of Israel inherently antisemitic, according to the IHRA
working definition?
Unfortunately,
the working definition itself doesn’t provide us with a definite answer – and
if we turn to the leading public bodies for guidance we find confusing and
contradictory advice. The Antisemitism Policy Trust is one such organisation.
Esteemed internationally and in the UK, among other functions it provides a
special adviser to John Mann, the government’s antisemitism tsar. Earlier this
year the trust issued a policy briefing in which it declared, “boycotts are not
covered by IHRA”. Some will have been reassured by this, others alarmed.
But in its
guide to the IHRA working definition, also published in 2020, the trust leans
heavily in the opposite direction. Here, in cloudy prose, it suggests that
either boycotts against Israel are antisemitic unless they also condemn all
other states that commit similar misdeeds, or that boycott movements are under
an obligation to “prove” they are not antisemitic – or both.
If the
Antisemitism Policy Trust is in a muddle over the IHRA working definition, how
can anyone else be certain what it means? Universities, like everyone else, are
sorely in need of good and clear guidance on when speech on Israel or Zionism
becomes antisemitic. Sadly, this is not what the working definition provides.
In these circumstances, its imposition by the secretary of state appears
reckless and brings real dangers.
The working
definition’s indeterminacy will provide a standing invitation to individuals
and organisations to bring allegations of antisemitism against students and
lecturers. Not least because some individuals and advocacy groups genuinely and
passionately believe that the movement to boycott Israel is inherently
antisemitic.
In the
absence of further aggravating factors, the individuals who are the subject of
these complaints may not run afoul of university policies and procedures. But
the chilling impact on students, on academic and professional staff and on
institutions dedicated to debate and robust discussion, will be corrosive and
long lasting.
Antisemitism
does arise in Britain’s universities. On occasion driven by ideology, this
largely reflects a reservoir of images and narratives accumulated over
centuries and deeply embedded in our culture. Antisemitism on campus comprises
one part of a mosaic of harms and harassment suffered by racial and religious
minorities. Jewish students and staff deserve protection, but imposing the
working definition will add nothing useful to secure it. The secretary of
state’s intervention divides Jews from other minorities. In doing so, he helps
neither but instead risks splitting the struggle against antisemitism from the
liberal values that have provided its most secure home. Let us hope he will
think again.
----
David Feldman is director of the Pears
Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/02/the-government-should-not-impose-a-faulty-definition-of-antisemitism-on-universities
----
Let’s Call U.S. Religious Freedom What It Is:
Privileging Of Superstition
By Rick Snedeker
NOVEMBER
28, 2020
The need is
becoming increasingly evident, especially considering a new U.S. Supreme Court
(SCOTUS) decision that specifically allows churches to ignore government
public-health edicts during the Covid-19 pandemic — along with other recent
SCOTUS rulings privileging religion over public secular imperatives.
Here’s the
First Amendment’s full text (the relevant passage is boldfaced):
Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or
the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government
for a redress of grievances.
The meaning
of “religious freedom” in America during the happily-now-ending Trump
presidency has become the freedom not for all citizens to privately believe and
express whatever spiritual imaginings they choose without government
interference but for religion to operate above the law that others must
generally follow. And to require others to accept that discrimination.
Because?
Well, because the implication by the high court majority is that religion is so
overarchingly special it requires extra-special protection even over other
possibly more fundamental American and human rights, like equal protection.
I must again
point out that this means superstition — that’s what religion in essence is,
after all — is at the highest government levels granted official primacy over
reason.
Yes,
religious freedom is, as they say, “enshrined” in the U.S. Constitution, but
also for a time was the “Three-fifths Compromise,” for instance, a deal reached
among delegates to the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention in which it was
agreed that three out of every five slaves would be counted as people. This
gave slave states “a third more seats in Congress and a third more electoral
votes than if slaves had been ignored, but fewer than if slaves and free people
had been counted equally,” according to The Writings of James Madison, page
143.
After all,
the niggling problem was that — as most Americans at the time (at least
subliminally) agreed — the phrase “All men are created equal” meant all white
men (pointedly not black men or women).
This
dubious and ignoble compromise wasn’t repealed until 1868, after the Civil War,
when it was superceded by the Fourteenth Amendment.
So, it is
clear that however “enshrined” things are in the Constitution, they are not
sacred in a mystical sense or even sacrosanct, or untouchable, in practice. As
the ejection of the Three-fifths Compromise language illustrates, America’s
founding document is a living, breathing, evolving blueprint for the nation’s
governance and civic life. It’s not an inert, absolutist document, as
fundamentalist Christians view the Bible (which isn’t “sacred” either, let’s be
honest).
Lest it be
doomed to become as dead as Latin, the Constitution must adapt meaningfully and
significantly (if carefully, thoughtfully and responsibly) as American society
is certain to transform in fundamental ways over time.
Which
brings me back to the Supreme Court’s arguably discriminatory new rulings
spurred by its recently increased conservative — and religiously conservative —
majority via very questionable GOP presidential and congressional court-packing
tactics. All current justices are devout Catholics, effectively Catholic (Neil
Gorsuch) or fervent Jews.
“The
Supreme Court’s new conservative majority late [on Nov. 25] sided with
religious organizations in New York that said they were illegally targeted by
pandemic-related restrictions imposed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to combat spiking
coronavirus cases,” the Washington Post reported.
The
majority in the 5-4 decision asserted that the quasi sacred edicts of the
Constitution (as a proxy for God, apparently) must override those of common
sense and public health.
“Even in a
pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten,” the unsigned
opinion stated in granting a stay of the state’s pandemic orders. “The
restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending
religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee
of religious liberty.”
In effect,
the august majority justices are saying that the right of Americans to worship
their gods is more fundamentally important than the right of their governments
to issue rational rules to help keep everyone — believers and nonbelievers —
safe from natural catastrophes, like pandemics.
Again, this
gives our worst superstitious impulses primacy over the better angels of
real-world actualities (i.e., science).
SCOTUS
Justice conservative Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is in alignment on this issue
with his fellow court conservatives, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose
confirmation to the court was recently rushed by the GOP-led Senate to precede
the Nov. 3 election.
Speaking
earlier this month to the conservative Federalist Society, which hand-picked a
slate of uber-conservative potential SCOTUS and federal court nominees for the
president, Justice Alito expressed his worry and resentment that respect for
faith appears to be eroding in American society. He lamented that the pandemic
“has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty,”
such as local-government edicts sharply limiting worship crowd size and
requiring face masks.
“This is
especially evident with respect to religious liberty. It pains me to say this,
but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored
right,” Alito added.
Reasonably,
religious rights ought to be “disfavored” in relation to rights associated with
real-world imperatives, like highly infectious and lethal viral pandemics
(e.g., the coronavirus). Religion is favored only because its ostensible
importance is vastly overexaggerated in majority-Christian America.
Justice
Gorsuch, a new arch-conservative on the court, is of the same mind but even
more aggressive about it than Alito. He archly disagrees with Chief Justice
John Roberts, who wrote in a similar earlier case in California that the court
should be very wary of “second-guessing” public health officials and overruling
their pandemic rules based on expert knowledge that justices do not have.
Gorsuch
wrote in the newest case that lower courts should not follow Roberts’ cautious
counsel in cases regarding pandemic-related restrictions:
“Courts
must resume applying the Free Exercise Clause. Today, a majority of the Court
makes this plain.”
He added
that the new ruling should dispel “misconceptions about the role of the
Constitution in times of crisis, which have already been permitted to persist
for too long.”
In other
words, he’s saying God should be viewed as supreme, in crisis or in calm.
Gorsuch and
Alito are not talking about the religious freedom to believe what you want and
express those beliefs; they’re saying that everyone else should adjust to — and
accept the attendant risk from — the beliefs of faithful people whose religious
rituals are inconvenienced by the pandemic and who refuse to temporarily
suspend them even under law, even if it would save lives.
Ironically,
the New York’s tough pandemic restrictions were implemented in neighborhoods,
predominantly traditional Jewish and Catholic, that had so flagrantly held mass
worship services that new Covid-19 cases in their areas shot through the roof.
Oh,
absolutely, let them continue doing what they’re doing.
I’m sure
the Founding Fathers would agree that protecting faith is so important that it
would reasonably sometimes require sacrificing thousands of innocent American
pandemic victims at the altar of religious freedom.
Mostly, the
Founders were worried religion would try to corrupt government, which is
exactly what SCOTUS conservatives are doing — they are insisting faith is the
supreme value in our republic and that the rest of us must accept that.
Because,
you know, religious freedom is mentioned in an official document.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/godzooks/2020/11/religious-bigotry-superstition-freedom-government-supreme-court-atheism/?utm
-----
A Turkish-German Couple May Save Us From the
Virus. So Why Is Germany Uneasy?
By Anna Sauerbrey
Dec. 2,
2020
When the
German company BioNTech and Pfizer announced last month that they had very
promising results for a vaccine against the coronavirus, my Twitter feed went
wild.
Alongside
the flood of congratulations and expressions of joy, there was cause for
special jubilation: Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, the couple who founded and run
BioNTech, are Germans of Turkish descent. Their story promised to challenge the
resentment against immigrants that over the past decade has become pervasive in
German public life. If anything could unseat anti-migrant sentiment, surely a
Turkish-German couple saving the world from a deadly virus would do it.
But nothing
is so simple. In heralding the pair as an exceptional “migrant success story,”
many unwittingly repeated the central tenets of anti-migrant thinking — that
migrants are fundamentally apart from the rest of German society, that a
special few may earn their place but the rest should be rejected. The
dissonance was jarring, but perhaps not surprising. When it comes to
immigration, Germany is uneasy even with its most spectacular successes.
Even so,
the invention of a vaccine by a couple with Turkish names seemed to come at the
right time. Ten years ago, in a book titled “Germany Abolishes Itself,” a
formerly high-ranking Social Democrat, Thilo Sarrazin, claimed that the
educational gap between immigrants from Muslim-majority countries and Germans
was rooted in genetic differences (“intellectual deficits,” he called them).
Immigration, Mr. Sarrazin warned, was threatening Germany’s economy by
decreasing overall education standards. The book became a best seller and still
sits on many middle-class bookshelves.
Alternative
for Germany, the far-right party formed in 2013 that has exploited and
intensified anti-migrant feeling, picked up on the narrative, stigmatizing
immigrants as a dangerous drain on the nation’s resources. The party never
stops pounding the drum. In 2018, for example, Alice Weidel, a co-leader of the
party, called immigrants “Kopftuchmädchen” and “Messermänner” — head scarf
girls and knife men — from the floor of Parliament. Political debate, in no
small measure because of the party’s success, often focuses on the problems
supposedly linked to immigration: religious zealotry, crime, poverty.
Against this
backdrop, Mr. Sahin’s and Ms. Türeci’s success felt like a welcome opportunity
to celebrate the benefits of immigration, to recognize how migrants enrich and
deepen our society. Their stories — Mr. Sahin, the son of a Turkish laborer,
came to Germany as a child while Ms. Türeci, the daughter of a Turkish doctor
who moved from Istanbul, was born in Germany — brought to light the often
hidden history of postwar immigration to Germany.
Starting in
the 1950s, to fuel its postwar industrial boom, Germany recruited laborers
mostly from Italy and Turkey. Called “Gastarbeiter” — “guest workers” — they
were not meant to stay. But many did, and today their children and
grandchildren are an integral part of the country’s society. Yet they are often
overlooked. Championing in particular the success of Dr. Sahin, the son of a
Ford factory worker, felt like a necessary corrective to such condescension.
But
singling out works both ways: It can offer much-needed recognition, but it can
also make immigrant success look like an exception and mark migrants out as
“not one of us,” as a colleague of mine pointed out. When I called a few
Germans of Turkish descent, many expressed a similar ambivalence.
“Finally,
here was something we have missed for a long time: appreciation,” Hatice Akyün,
a friend and a columnist for the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel (where I work),
told me. As a fellow child of “guest workers,” she felt a connection to the
couple — “a biographical pride, if you will.” But she was also uncomfortable
with the focus on their biographies. “I’ve played the role of a poster child
for successful integration myself for a long time,” she said. “But it can be
tiring and frustrating to be seen through that lens all the time.”
Naika
Foroutan, a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, seemed to share this
feeling. “I think it is right and important and gratifying that their descent
is stressed,” she wrote in an email. But she, too, has had enough of the focus
on role models. “This type of framing reproduces the idea of exceptionality —
that it’s always an exception when migrants rise in society and achieve
something big,” she wrote.
Not only
does that overlook the essential role migrants play in society generally; it’s
also far from the truth: Studies show that migrants tend across time to move up
the social strata. But migrants remain underrepresented in the top echelons of
society and their opportunities for advancement, generally, are limited.
For Cem
Özdemir, a member of the Green Party who in 1994 was the first child of a
Turkish “guest worker” to be elected to Germany’s Parliament, that’s what makes
it important to highlight stories like those of Dr. Sahin and Dr. Türeci. “In
Germany, where you come from still plays a major role in determining where
you’re going to go,” Mr. Özdemir told me. So it’s especially important to
elevate inspiring examples, as an encouragement for those navigating the
difficulties of German society. “I know from my own experiences that with a
Turkish name,” he said, “you will always have to do better, be watched closer.”
It’s a sad
truth. More than a half century after the parents of Mr. Özdemir, Ms. Akyün and
Dr. Sahin came to Germany, the country is ill at ease with its immigration
history — and far from providing everybody with the same chances. That’s why,
for now, Dr. Sahin and Dr. Türeci’s story is essential. It shows that Germany’s
successes are inseparable from the migrants who — in 1960 or 2020 — come to
call the country home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/opinion/biontech-vaccine-germany-immigration.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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A Responsible Withdrawal From Afghanistan
New York Times
Editorial Board
Nov. 30,
2020
For years,
the stalemate in Afghanistan has left American officials torn between two bad
options: Prop up a corrupt, hopelessly divided Afghan government indefinitely
or admit defeat and go home, leaving the country to its fate. At 19 years and
counting, the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan is already the longest war in
American history. A consensus has been forming that it is time for U.S. troops
to come home. But the speed of the withdrawal and whether any residual force
will be left behind to carry out counterterrorism operations remain open
questions.
The Trump
administration has taken laudable steps toward a U.S. exit. In February, it
struck a deal with the Taliban to withdraw American forces from the country
within 14 months. In exchange, the Taliban agreed to cut ties with Al Qaeda,
prevent terrorists from using Afghanistan as a base for international attacks,
help reduce violence and participate in talks with Afghanistan’s political
leadership to try to end the conflict.
American
diplomats have been pressing the Taliban to live up to their end of the
bargain. Qaeda fighters are still believed to be embedded with the Taliban,
although Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, may now be dead, according to
Pakistani media. Intra-Afghan peace talks began in Doha, the capital of Qatar,
in September but have stalled over a fresh wave of attacks and uncertainty over
whether the Biden administration will honor the deal with the Taliban. Over the
weekend, the Taliban announced on social media that both sides had agreed to a
set of guiding principles for the talks, but President Ashraf Ghani of
Afghanistan has reportedly pushed back on that claim, denying that an agreement
has been reached.
The two
sides have yet to begin confronting a host of seemingly irreconcilable
differences, including whether to be a theocracy or a republic, and the status
of women and followers of the Shiite sect of Islam. The Taliban claim that they
now accept Shiites as fellow Muslims. But previously Taliban leaders have
justified persecuting them as infidels. In 1998, Taliban commanders massacred
thousands of Hazaras, an ethnic minority that predominantly follows Shiite
Islam, when they took power in their region. Today, two commanders of that
bloody operation are among the Taliban negotiators in Doha. Some Hazaras fear
the Taliban are simply going through the motions of peace talks until U.S.
forces leave.
Efforts to
hold the Taliban accountable for their commitments have been undercut by the
Trump administration’s abrupt announcement that it will pull all but 2,500
American troops out of the country by Jan. 15, regardless of whether the
conditions the Taliban agreed to have been met. President Trump, who spent
Thanksgiving 2019 with U.S. soldiers at Bagram Airfield, wants to keep a
promise to bring American soldiers home before he leaves office. But NATO’s
secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, expressed alarm at Mr. Trump’s
announcement and said the alliance would continue to train Afghan security
forces even with the planned U.S. reductions. NATO has 12,000 personnel in the
country, about half of whom are often American troops, and relies heavily on
the U.S. military for transportation and logistics.
President-elect
Joe Biden is unlikely to depart radically from the Trump administration’s exit
plan. Mr. Biden opposed the Obama-era surge in Afghanistan and wrote in the
spring in Foreign Affairs magazine that “it is past time to end the forever
wars.”
But an
American withdrawal does not have to mean ending financial support for the
Afghan people or leaving the region in chaos. The United States has a moral
obligation to work with regional partners to try to clean up the mess we are
leaving behind.
Americans
have the geopolitical luxury of flying away from a war they plunged into in
2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Afghanistan’s neighbors do
not. Six countries share a border with Afghanistan. Not one wants a failed
state on its doorstep. Afghanistan has been at war almost continuously since
1978, partly because its powerful neighbors have all tried to manage the chaos
inside it by funding proxies. A debilitating free-for-all might be prevented if
Afghanistan’s neighbors work together to support a peace process.
This is a
rare instance where Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and the United States all
share a common interest: the orderly departure of American troops and
preventing Afghanistan from imploding.
Mr. Trump,
who has a well-known allergy to multilateral cooperation and a zero-sum
mentality toward Iran and China, has been unable to fully engage Afghanistan’s
neighbors in the effort to stabilize the country. In March 2019, American
diplomats threatened to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution renewing the
mandate of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan because it referred to
China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And the Trump administration’s “maximum
pressure” campaign against Iran scared off international investors in Chabahar,
an Iranian port considered essential for increasing trade in landlocked
Afghanistan.
Barnett
Rubin, a former State Department official who is now the director of the
Afghanistan-Pakistan Regional Project at New York University, argues that the
United States would benefit from having a strategic vision for the region that
was bigger than “no Al Qaeda.”
“Stop
looking at Afghanistan as either ‘war on terror’ or nothing and broaden the
aperture to see that it is a country in a region with China, Russia, Iran,
India and Pakistan — four nuclear powers,” he said. “They all have a very
strong interest in trying to stabilize Afghanistan. Even though they want our
troops out, they are worried we are doing it too quickly.”
The Biden
administration is better positioned to test the limits of regional diplomacy.
While it is far from clear that Afghan talks can negotiate a political
settlement that will end the war between the Taliban and the Afghan government,
a coordinated regional approach is more likely to produce success than a rapid
unilateral American withdrawal. American soldiers should not be held hostage to
a peace agreement that might never come. But with U.S. troops down to 2,500
soldiers, some portion of which is needed as a security umbrella for the
embassy, the costs of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan have fallen sharply. The
Biden administration has time to craft a more responsible withdrawal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/opinion/afghanistan-withdrawal-biden.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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