pakshahara

Books: Dirk A. H. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450-1850.

2012-02-17T08:21:00.001-08:00

December 30, 2008
by caindevera

At Google Books

As the title suggests, Dirk A. H. Kolff`s minor classic of a book is quite heavy at times, and not for the faint of heart or for those who don`t want to read about military recruitment and Rajput poetry. It`s a rather unique book as well, as its focus is really on the cultural and labour history of certain military service groups in northern India, ones with close connections to the peasantry and made up at first of nebulous `castes` whose identity only became solid by the middle of the seventeenth century.

It isn`t an easy book to summarise, because Kolff really has collected here a series of related articles to draw a picture of the history of the Indian sepoy and the labour market that supplied them to ruler after ruler. The thread that runs between these articles is tenuous, and some of the chapters are better than others (or rather, some are more interesting to me), as is usual for a scholarly book of this sort. Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy does surprise the reader with a sense of the flexibility and mobility of pre-modern British society.

The peasantry of India were heavily armed. Kolff cites Peter Mundy`s reminiscences of travelling through India in 1632, in the present-day Kanpur district, where Mundy saw: “labourers with their guns, swords and bucklers leying by them while they ploughed the ground”. Another example from 1650 describes the Rajputs of the Agra area:

“They are a numerous, industrious and brave race. Every village has a small fort. They never pay revenue to the hakim (tax-collector) without a fight. The peasants (riàya) who drive the plough keep a musket (bandug) slung over their neck and a powder-pouch at the waist. The relief-loan (taqavi) they get from the hakim is in the form of lead and gunpowder.”

As Kolff notes, the monopoly of arms we assume to be a feature of the modern state was impossible in pre-Mughal and Mughal India. The peasantry was so well armed and numerous that it could be considered less the subjects then the rivals of the state. Tax collectors and recruiters could be assaulted and killed, and were likely to enter an area well protected, as were caravans that hired hundreds of guards (many of them mobile peasants as well); troops were driven out or robbed on the march. The problem of rules, Kolff writes, “was how to deal with the peasantry at large, how to subject to some manner of control and collect revenue from these almost ungovernable tens of millions of people protected by mud forts, ravines, jungles… and the weapons they were so familiar with” (9). This difficulty of rule meant that the Mughals were never as absolute or despotic as we imagine, and that on the local, provincial or regional level rule meant negotiation, loan relief, tax exemption, the waving of debts and the toleration of continued armament.

This `freedom’ of the peasantry was dearly bought: villages too recalcitrant, or too well organized, or supporting the forces of bandits and rulers hostile to the Mughals, would be razed. Whole towns would be sold into slavery as the ultimate punitive measure, if the inhabitants simply weren`t massacred. Mundy, again in 1632, travelling between Agra and Patna in Bihar, “saw, during four days of passage…200 minars or pillars on which a total of 70,000 heads were fixed with mortar.” According to Mundy, this was the work of Abdullah Khan, a powerful Mughal general, whose force of 30,000 “destroyed all their [the peasants] townes, tooke all their goods, their wives and children for slaves, and the chieftest of their men, causing their heads to be cut off and to be immotered” The result was constant low level warfare, that might not be unfamiliar from early seventeenth century France or nineteenth century Russia. Only by about 1818 was the British East India Company able to disarm and pacify much of the countryside in its grasp, but only then as part of a general trend to fix peasants to their home, deprive them of many forms of redress and confiscating their means of resistance, the ubiquitous matchlock musket.

The ‘unsettled’ centuries of pre-British India were ones of opportunity for soldiers, some of whom came to be known as `rajputs`. The term is generally ethnic now, but was much less specific in early modern India. As the title of the book suggests, rajput was just another appellation like naukar or sepoy, generic and vague enough to encompass a wide variety of peoples and groups, and even organizations, even if the `proper` Rajput clans did exist at that time. Kolff describes this process:

“Rajput soldiers of the seventeenth century must have been of the most diverse origins. True, with a large number of them, memories of their precise social backgrounds were gradually obscured by vague territorial identities or claims of ksatriya status. But in ancient times, recruitment…had not taken social origins into account. Instead, it overlaid old identities with a new…’rajput’ veneer.” (155).

Certain castes considered themselves `pure` Rajput, and monopolized certain ‘regal’ names and territories, but the evidence that Kolff musters suggests that many otherwise unremarkable peasant groups were able to assume the mantle of glorious (and lucrative) rajput even if they were not considered of the ‘right’ caste.

Much of Naukar, Rajput & Sepoy is taken up by histories of this sort, of warbands and mercenary captains of indeterminate origin raising themselves through service, bribery and conquest to be the equals of princes or at least to be recognized as important by emperors. Many of the men that came to serve these warlords were from far away, with the chief recruiting grounds centred in areas of dense population but poor state control, like Bihar or Malwa. It would not be unusual for a man or groups of men to travel far, from Malwa to serve in Gawlior or the Deccan, and these lines of recruitment to certain villages were very venerable indeed, lasting until long past the British conquest. Likewise, rajput could often be synonymous with bandit or outlaw, as petty Rajput rulers were frequently chased into the jungles and became gangs of freebooters and robbers, only to emerge decades later and reestablish a claim to their traditional parganas. These bandit-kings, likewise, had little trouble adjusting to the service of the Mughal emperors, but their service always carried the risk of a return to outlawry if not satiated by treasure and title. Banditry and soldiering were off-season occupations for many peasants, a chance during the dry season, especially if crops failed, to loot, steal or be rewarded for their service; consequently, campaigns often began after the harvest was in, to ensure a ready supply of idle hands, willing to soldier for the potential of rich rewards.

A multiplicity of identities was common to early modern India. We are used to the cliché that “one man`s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” but such contradictions of subjectivity were common place in north India. A professional rajput soldier could easily be a bandit and a peasant, indeed were all three, and their identity had more to do with those occupations than with an ethnic or religious solidarity and consciousness (though these did play a role, indisputably). Employment by an Iranian or Afghan also implied a certain initiation into that ethnic group. Many peasants, before the Mughals, could, through service and success, become a rajput, and their hiring by a powerful notable cemented such status.

Likewise with the Afghans and Turks that served the armies of the Lodi dynasty and the warlord Sher Shah. We do not know if the warriors that served them were actually ethnically Afghan or Turk as we understand it; some certainly were, but these terms became synonymous with warrior as readily as rajput or sepoy, and thus nearly as meaningless in more specific senses. Kolff relates that as late as 1918 Hindu men were changing their name to Singh and enlisting in Sikh brigades; undoubtedly such processes, such ease at changing name and identity, were at work much earlier, and involved the same pragmatism: war and manpower. Treasure decided loyalties, manpower determined military success, and tapping into the labour market, into these self-made communities of obscure warriors, was necessary for success, no questions asked, as the French Foreign Legion was so fond of.

So long as the rajputs remained mercenaries on the outskirts, they were still open to recruits of any caste and ethnicity, melting old identities and making new ones. Kolff documents British attempts to trace the genealogies of groups claiming to be Rajput, and discovering both the lowness of their original station, ferrymen, farmers, artisans and wanderers, and the spuriousness of their claimsto the Rajput names. Indeed, it does not seem that Rajput as a clear term of ethnicity and culture was solidified until the seventeenth century, as part of a process by which the Mughals adopted Rajputs (who may have started their careers as lowly rajputs) into their imperial house and made them powerful members of the state. The incentive to formalize, specific and make exclusive what it meant to be Rajput, andespecially to ensure that only high castes could become Rajput, came from this ascension to power.

By the nineteenth century, sepoys in service of the East India Company, once a name for a profession united by military service and little else, was monopolized, or colonized, by high caste Rajput as well, as native recruiting sergeants chose men of their own, apparently exalted caste. Conclusions derived by Kolff, or from the book: caste is not nearly as fixed or timeless a determinant of social position as it was previously thought (of course this had long been under attack sociologically and politically, but Kolff adds some additional historical derived material) against the assumption that caste (as described in Homo Hierarchicus by Louis Dumont for instance) has been sharply defined and delineated since at least the Vegas. The reality is that caste could be and was negotiated and flexible, requiring consent and active collaboration, and during the early modern period of Indian history still open to manipulation, not just by high castes but by low, and that the lowly anonymous farmer-bandit-soldier was an active agent both in improving his lot and his station, in resisting or joing the dominant hierarchies, and thus combating another (as I pointed out in Bayly’s work) another still strong cliché about India: that the village and rural life was of crushing, monotonous, changeless despair, forever beholden to the demands and horrors of the rulers (until the British arrived, so goes the story used in part to bolster colonial regimes) was not inevitably bond to a cruel, unchanging system. India was never as stable, oppressive or absolutist as the assumptions frequently made by earlier scholars; quite the opposite, there was actually less order than in much of Europe at the same time, and an equally longstanding tradition of peasant resistance against, but also participation and self-fashioning in, the states and ruling classes of India, a situation that puts the jacqueries of Europe to shame.

Blugaria's muslims and Saudi Money

2012-02-05T17:23:00.000-08:00

Here Bulgarians demostrate at the Main mosque in Sophia:

Meanwhile, in J&K...... Christians get a taste the ethnic cleansing Hindus faced

2012-01-23T21:39:00.000-08:00

Pioneer
January 23, 2012

The manner in which Muslim zealots in Jammu & Kashmir have been harassing the State’s Christian minority community over a religious conversion row that erupted last week demonstrates yet again the unbridled and absolutely illegal manner in which mullahs are enforcing their writ.

They have now begun to ‘ban’ priests, ‘banish’ foreign NGOs and demand that missionary-run schools should include Islamic prayers. Given this kind of bullying, it is little wonder that the Valley’s Christians are living in fear. They have become the victims of a vicious slander campaign that includes the kind of story that one of the State’s English dailies ran last Thursday.

A full-page spread titled, ‘Apostasy Unveiled’, the report is a first person account of a love-lorn young Muslim boy who has been lured with money, alcohol and drugs and ultimately beguiled into converting to Christianity — just the kind of thing that the Muslim-majority State’s religious guardians can be trusted to raise a ruckus about.

Ever since the conversion dispute surfaced, the situation has progressively worsened for the Christians, as the Valley’s mullahs have stepped up their efforts to make the entire community in Jammu & Kashmir — which has only a few hundred members — and even foreigners who practice Christianity, their target of hate and violence.

The most telling example of this mindless harassment is perhaps the story of Juan Marcos Troia — an Argentine football coach who had been promoting his sport in the Valley but is now being hounded by the fanatics. His house has been vandalised, funding for his clubs are under the scanner and he has received calls in the middle of the night asking how many copies of the Bible he keeps at home.

At the centre of this controversy is a certain Protestant Pastor, CM Khanna. The mullahs have released a video of his baptising Muslim boys and a shari’ah ‘court’ has expelled him from the State in blatant violation of the law of the land that does not recognise such illegitimate directives.
While the fundamentalists have behaved in the way they would be expected to — and as they have always done — it is for the State Government to end the persecution of the Christian minority which follows the cleansing of the Kashmir Valley of its Hindu minority. Unfortunately, no protection has been given to Pastor Khanna (instead, he has been arrested for disturbing communal peace) nor to the likes of Mr Troia — all of whom have been left to fend for themselves.

Similarly, the country’s Left-liberals, who are quick to denounce Hindus, have, once again, remained stunningly silent in the face of Islamist bullying. Just like they once glossed over the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, today there is barely a murmur of protest in support of the Christians living in the Valley.

Racial violence grips British society

2012-01-10T16:51:00.001-08:00

Racist violence migrates to the country

The Independent (UK)
Saturday 26 June 2010

Racism and xenophobic violence is flourishing in towns and villages across Britain – while inner city areas that were once hotbeds of racial violence are now more "at ease" with diversity, according to a new report.

Researchers at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) analysed 660 racist attacks across Britain last year and found growing evidence to suggest that violence against minorities has shifted to rural areas and towns.

The IRR said hatred and bigotry had spread in less than a generation thanks to a broad spread of asylum seekers, migrant workers, overseas students and the movement of settled ethnic minority families. Prejudice was also being fanned, they concluded, by mainstream political parties competing with one another over which could cut immigration the fastest.

"What has emerged is that the map of violence has changed quite dramatically since studies were first done of such violence in the 1970s," the authors wrote.

"It is no longer poor, deprived areas of London such as Southall, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Newham, which witnessed many of the racial attacks and racist murders a generation or two ago, that are now so prone to serious attacks. Not only are black and ethnic minority communities now more established there but also a whole history of struggle against racism has strengthened these communities."They added: "But what was significant was that ethnic minorities in a whole host of cities, towns and areas, not traditionally associated with such violence, now appear to be experiencing it.

These are areas which have traditionally been very white and are not affluent. In some cases, core industries have gone and a whole generation of young people are without a future."The authors said minority ethnic groups, asylum seekers and migrant communities are bearing the brunt of these tensions. They found asylum seekers, newly-arrived migrant workers and people who look Muslim are most at risk of attack, while trades that isolate individuals, such as cab driving, serving in takeaways and staffing small shops were found to be the most dangerous.

IRR researchers say at least 89 identifiably racist murders have taken place in Britain since Stephen Lawrence was killed while waiting for a bus in Eltham, south London, in 1993 – an average of five a year.

Of the victims, 39 were Asian, 25 were black, four were white British and three were white eastern Europeans.Lee Bridges, who analysed official crime statistics for the report, found that while racist attacks had decreased in London over the past decade, they have dramatically risen in proportion elsewhere.

In 1999/2000, London recorded 23,401 racist incidents, 49 per cent of the national total. By 2007/8 that number had dropped to 9,866, a 58 per cent reduction. Last year, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Thames Valley and Lancashire accounted for 28 per cent of the national total, a 103 per cent increase on 10 years ago.

Case Study: Indian sailor died after attack by gang of 20 youths

Gregory Fernandes, a 32-year-old sailor from Goa in India, was walking back to the cargo ship he worked on in Fawley, Hampshire when he and a friend were set upon by a 20-strong gang of youths. It was October 2007. Mr Fernandes was his family's breadwinner. A passerby broke up the fight and drove Mr Fernandes to his cargo ship, but he dropped dead from a heart attack.Police concluded that the attack, which took place in a normally quiet backwater of Hampshire, had clear racist overtones.

The gang had been shouting "Paki" during the assault. In January 2008, the Fernandes family expressed concern at the police investigation and the failure to charge anyone in connection with his death. Three young boys were later charged with his murder. At their trial in February 2009, the three admitted lesser charges of manslaughter. In March 2009, Stephen Pritchard, 18, Daniel Rogers, 18, and Chay Fields, 16, were sentenced to six-and-a-half years. A 15-year-old boy admitted GBH on Mr Fernandes' friend and was given a 12-month detention and training order. Another 15-year-old who admitted assault was given an 18-month supervision order.

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See also:
Fri Jan 6, 2012

PressTV (Iran)

Britain's racism problems have once again come under spotlight after two white men were eventually convicted of a racist murder that took place 19 years ago.The trial of Stephen Lawrence's murderers and the racial murder of the Indian student Anuj Bidve on Boxing Day have disclosed the depth of racism problems in Britain.According to Britain's Home Office, 51,187 racist cases were reported to the police just in England and Wales in 2010-11.Moreover, the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) has revealed that since the racial murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, at least ninety-six people have been killed, being victims to racial violence.The IRR also revealed that in 2009 there were at least 660 cases of racial violence eighty-nine percent of which were committed by white people.The IRR severely criticises British politicians for the widespread racism problem in the UK. On the one hand, they refrain from dealing with such problems unless they are after electoral victory.On the other hand, “it is the policies and pronouncements of mainstream politicians, on a range of issues from terrorism and foreign wars to cohesion, criminality and immigration, which create the insidious popular racism in which such violence foments.”British officials complacently believe the 1999 MacPherson report, which recommended measures subjecting the police to greater public control and extended the classification of racist offences, has been able to tackle problems of racism in Britain.Nevertheless, according to the IRR, at least 81 cases of murder due to racial violence have been reported since 1999.Moreover, a study conducted by the London School of Economics and the Open Society Justice Initiative has revealed that black people are 26 times more susceptible to stop and search practices by the police than white people are.The IRR asserts that British “politicians remain in denial about the extent and severity of racial violence and popular racism” while their actions and remarks fuel the racial violence gripping the British society.

Racist English woman rant

2012-01-10T16:14:00.001-08:00

and more...and men too..

CONVERSIONS AS MUSLIM MALAISE

2012-01-08T08:54:00.000-08:00

From ML Kaul's excellent book:
Kashmir: Wail of a Valley

There is hardly any conceivable excess and atrocity which the Kashmiri Pandits as a characteristic religious group have not been subjected to by the Muslim marauders. Apart from the pogrom having no semblance of a human face that was perpetrated on them the devastating catastrophe that could befall them was the forcible conversion to an alien religion of Islam.

History is a pulsating witness to the brutal conversions that were realised by Muslim monarchs whether of Sunni or Shia brand through spilling of blood, hacking of flesh and splintering of body limbs for transforming religious complexion of Kashmir. Sikander, Ali Shah, Malik Saif-ud-din, Kaji Chak, Aurangzeb and Afghan surrogates as medieval despots were at pains to devise all instruments of coercion and repression with the ominous motive of proliferating the support-base of Islam which in Kashmir at the initial stages was near negligible. With the loss of political power to the Sikhs the raging fury of proselytisation campaigns came to a sudden halt but the deep and crippling scar of conversion was already inflicted on the religious personality of Kashmir. Some of the neo-converts who were traumatised by the forcible conversion to Islam harked back to their birth religion. Had the process found support from the power structures it would have turned into a roaring tide.

With the decay of Sikh state the reins of power in Kashmir were handed over to the Dogras by the British masters and with the speed of lightning a consistent campaign of calumny virulent hatred was unleashed by the Punjab based violent and fanatic Muslim groups urging the Kashmir Muslims to dismantle the Dogra rule spoke by spoke. Demands were yelled that the rulers who were dubbed as staunch Hindus should cease to create hurdles in the holy task of conversions from other faiths and should desist from interference in the launch of straightforward hate campaigns against the religious enemies.

In the murderous loot of 1931 the seven Kashmiri Pandits belonging to a single family of the village of Kanikoot near yusmarg were offered conversion as an alternate choice to escape slaughter. In 1932 when riots were triggered off in Mirpur the Hindus were massacred, arsoned and coerced to accept Islamic faith. Forty-one Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam in the Kotli Police Station area. In the Seri Police Station area four hundred and thirty-five Hindus from ten villages were coerced to join the Islamic ranks. In Kotli Tehsil five Hindus were slaughtered- who reportedly rejected the offer of conversion to Islam. A Maulvi, combative and violent, from Kashmir was responsible for the riots in Rajouri with their quick impact in all the adjoining areas.

"Islam is in danger" (and ironically it is always deemed in danger) is the standard Muslim tactics of generating Muslim paranoia against Hindus and mobilising the Muslim hordes for unleashing wild frenzy for Jehad. In the ensuing tidal wave of chaos and mayhem the Hindu minority for one reason or the other is charged with betrayal and sacrilege to Islam and struck with fear psychosis generated in ample measure by the yelling and howling Muslim crowds many succumb to the sword of Islam. Pt. Hargopal, a poet and historian, known as the Lion of Kashmir, along with Janki Nath and Sham Narain was accused of having used abusive language against Islam over a trifling issue of trespass which, his neighbour, a Moulvi, refused to remove despite numerous requests and entreaties. Hargopal was put under detention to quell the mob fiery. His licence as a practicing lawyer was cancelled. Despite court acquittal the Muslims as a combination of brute force and harsh coercion never felt satisfied with the quantum of punishment awarded to him. Ultimately all the three were exiled from their native homes.

The tribal raid of 1947 had all the contours of Muslim Jehad and primeval savagery. Thousands of Hindus, men, women and children whose staggering numbers were never divulged were mercilessly butchered and conversions as a Muslim malaise resorted to on a large scale. Till the adjoining areas of Baramulla and the town itself were under the deluge of tribals Kahmiri Pandits who were unable to move to the safer zones in the city of Srinagar were not only looted and killed but also converted to the Islamic religion by the secular progeny of humanists drummed about as Islamic sufis. After the territories under the avalanche of the barbarous raiders were cleared by the valiant soldiers of India, prominent Kashmiri Pandits like Pt. Kashyap Bandhu, Pt. Shamboo Nath Ogra, Pt. Sham Lal Shalla alongwith Rameshwari Nehru toured the villages and hamlets where Muslim marauders having planted banners of crescent had effected forcible conversions. The neo-converts despite threats and verbal invectives from the Muslim bigots were re-christened and restored to their birth religion.

The Muslim fundamentalist movement of 1989-variety targeting the Kashmiri Pandits as enemies of Islam and agents of Brahmanical imperialism realised their massive exodus to the Siberia of Indian plains. History has been repeating for them. They were slaughtered and their hefty properties looted, grabbed or destroyed as per the religious ordinances and fatwas that have been relentlessly and immutably in vogue. Buzzing off to safer zones despite heavy losses in terms of life and limb, what satisfied them the most was that they preserved their ideological and religious personality which they had acquired through civilisational processes of growth and flowering and had not renounced even in the worst.times of Muslim holocaust. Yet there are a few thousand of their co-religionists who chose to stay back for their own reasons despite polarisation on communal lines and religious cleansing. Their presence in the valley though confined to the high security zone has been blown out to authenticate and propagate the dubious theory of Muslim secular sense, tolerant ethos and intellectual acceptance of composite culture. As is buttressed by the authentic reports their numbers are believed not to exceed a bare two thousand. But the vested interests in cohorts with unscrupulous elements in the corridors of central government inflated their figures to a whopping twenty thousand only to secularist the troubled times and to establish that the Pandits' perception of deadly threat from the Muslim majority was only a ploy to be in self-exile.

The Kashmiri Pandits who have chosen to stay back as subservient to Muslim identity and majoritatianism are to all intents and purposes hostages to the Muslim majority and have been victims to Muslim fundamentalist terror attacks and Qrgies of carnage. The fate of Sohan Lal Braroo, his wife and his innocent daughter has blackened the countenance of Muslim rationality and exposed the Muslim pretensions of allegiance to Sufi Islam and caused shivers in the corridors of Geneva, the seat of Human Rights Commission. T.N. Bhat who had stayed back and was a poor guy eking out existence from the scarce earnings from a few temples. The inhuman terrorists earning tremendous favours and sympathies from the Muslim masses robbed him of his earnings at the Shrine of Zeshta Devi, tied him to a three wheeler, wounding him brutally and fatally and hurled him in an unconscious state into the Dal Lake for final burial. But the humiliating disability and torture that they have been subjected to is the forcible conversion to Islam and adoption of Muslim dress codes, language nuances and other outer appearances that stand out a Muslim.

The Report of a team of the Gandhi Peace Foundation which visited Kashmir very recently reveals, "Those Kashmiri Pandits who have stayed back with their families have made adjustments with the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Their women do not wear sari, do not put on a bindi or wear 'dejohur'. They have no outward sign of being married."

Since the volcanic eruption of fundamentalist insurgency till June, 1994 a good number of Kashmiri Pandits and their daughters under duress have been forcibly converted to Islam at the hands of rabid Muslims owing allegiance to multiple armed outfits.82 The Pandit girls who were abducted from their house-holds and work - places were forcibly converted and married to Muslims after meting out to them the treatment prescribed for the looted women of Kafirs. In the hateful conversion campaigns the Jammaati-Islami has been in the active vanguard and has drawn unstinted and unqualified support from a Muslim fanatic, Qazi Nissar, and some Janata Dal turn-coat politicals with a dubious track-record in politics. The pages of "Kashmiriayat" as the official organ of umat-e-Islami have showered a litany of plaudits and praises on Qazi Nissar impelled by the Islamic concept of Kufra for the initiation and direction of the conversion campaign. The hapless victims to the brutality of conversion generally belong to the villages of Anantnag, Pulwama and Tangmarg.

In Tral (District Pulwama) a Pandit family with a teenage daughter clinging to its habitat like a limpet was coerced to accept Islam by the rabid Jammaat activists.84 Since its conversion the brutalised family has been shifted from its ancestral house to the house of a Muslim in the same locality. Attempts galore have been made to abduct the teenage girl by the lecherous elements held in high esteem as the saviours of Islam. The Pandit family is under close watch lest it should slip off to the safer zones for retrieval from the atrocity and as is reliably reported has been under lessons of initiation in Islamic precepts and practices by some rabid Mullahs who have been howling along with dogs since 19/20th January 1990 as generalismos of Islamic army of marauders.

Another Kashmiri pandit girl from Safapora was made off as a prize catch by a Muslim in broad daylight. She was converted under the shadow of a gun and married to her Muslim abductor. The parents of the girl living in absolutely hostile environs meekly protested against the atrocity but were threatened with dire consequences if they did not shut up their traps and maintain stoic silence. The mother of the girl under a terrific shock developed serious ailments and her spouse floated a humiliating application in the dailies for permission from the brutal terrorists to shift his wife to Srinagar for proper medical;aid. The family somehow managed to flee to Jammu and thus was able to save another teenage daughter from the similar fate awaiting her.

In Tangmarg a Kashmiri Pandit lady married with children was said to have been lifted and forcibly married to a Muslim who is said to be a driver. Her husband tried to report the abduction to the nearby police station but was threatened with dire consequences by the hostile Muslims in the area. In the same area another girl with Hindu origins was said to have been converted and married to a Muslim under duress.

Again in Tral (District Pulwama) a Kashmiri Pandit girl living with her parents was abducted by the Islamic terrorists who rule the roost despite government claims of normalcy. She was converted to Islam under gun-point and married by a terrorist affiliated to a particular brand of terrorist formation. Another terrorist of a different brand did not take kindly to the marriage and after an incessant chase were able to spot the terrorist and his bride and without mincing words commanded him to hand over the girl to him for marriage. Losing his cool and in utter rage the terrorist pounced on his rival and in the ensuing bloody duel he fell to a bullet. The rival made off with his catch to the privacy of a den leaving behind no clues for tracing him out.

In the health resort of Pahalgam a Kashmiri Pandit boy possessed of Dutch courage reportedly married a Muslim girl from the same area. The Muslim terrorists alongwith their Muslim supporters were shell-shocked by such a marriage as it was deemed to score off the history that they were writing in Kashmir. They were dead set after the two lovers for their annihilation. Ultimately after a hunt the couple was traced, abducted and mercilessly beheaded with a blunt axe. Their bodies with severed heads were recovered from a field. How could a space be allowed to those who are deviants from the grammar of Islam?

Scores of Sikh girls have been abducted and brutally converted to the Islamic religion. The abduction and subsequent conversion of Satinder Kour D/o Bhupender Singh R/o Khawaja Bagh, Barmulla and Surinder Kour D/o Dalip Singh R/o Alucha Bagh, Srinagar have been splashed in the media. Appeals to the Sikh separatist leader Simranjit Singh Mann who had informed the valley Sikhs that he had ensured their safety through a pact with the Kashmiri terrorists failed to secure their release from the clutches of the Islamic crusaders. The Sikh organizations of varied hues from the Punjab have also issued numerous appeals for the redemption of the Sikh girls but to no avail. The chief of the Dukhtaran-i-Milat, Aisha Indrabi, has been assiduously working to the nefarious end of realising the conversion of many a Sikh and Pandit girl.

In the villages of Sopore, Tral, Mattan, Anantnag et al the Pandit families that have been atrociously converted to Islam are allowed to retain the pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses only to mislead the anti-terrorist operators and maintain the effectiveness of the den.

Som Deva reports, "Since the eruption of the fundamentalist insurgency till June, 1994 nearly a hundred Pandit and many Sikh girls have suffered this fate at the hands of Jamaat-i-Islami and Its armed outfit Hizbul Mujahideen. Later on they were married to Muslim boys."

He continues, " In July, 1993 two Pandit girls at the historic village Omanagri (Anantnag) and another one at Safapore were forcibly converted to Islam by Jammaat activists. The attempts by their families which subsequently migrated to Jammu to seek the help of official agencies for retrieving their daughters evoked no response."

Jai Ho

2012-01-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

On 15 August India became free and Pakistan became enslaved

2012-01-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

The Re-Colonization of Africa. Berlin, 1884 and Paris, 2011

2011-11-26T17:39:00.001-08:00

Written by Stef Terblanche

Last week the world was treated to the spectacle of the Paris Conference where one Western leader after the other – together with a few token Arab dictators – patted themselves on the back for "liberating" Libya from the rule of Muammar Gaddafi. It quickly brought to mind the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884 at which Africa was sliced up among its European colonisers.

Quite rightly so, South Africa's President Jacob Zuma let it be known - as any self-respecting African should have done - that he would have nothing to do with this cynical circus initiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, ostensibly to decide Libya's future...as if Libyans and Africans themselves should not be doing that.

In the end there was a conspicuous absence of influential African leaders, with a number of African countries and the African Union (AU) having refused to recognise the Nato-installed National Transitional Council (NTC) as the new government of Libya. Libya's neighbour, Algeria, was there, but only as an observer and perhaps only because its shared border with Libya gave it a pressing reason.

Russia and China – both of which opposed the Nato-led military campaign to oust Gaddafi - attended as observers, with Russia having recognised the NTC only days earlier. However, both these countries have major vested interests in Libya, with China having enormous interests further afield in Africa, such as Angola now being its biggest supplier of oil.

For many Sarkozy and Cameron's 2011-style "scramble for Africa" conference also brought to mind erstwhile ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli's acceptance speech in Norway in 1960 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize and said: "Our continent has been carved up by the great powers. Alien governments have been forced upon the African people by military conquest and by economic domination".

As Vusi Gumede of the University of Johannesburg so eloquently reminded us in an opinion piece in the Sunday Independent this weekend: "A case in point 50 years later is the painful issue of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. There are other cases such as Côte d'Ivoire, which is a ticking time-bomb."

To these Gumede could have added the growing "economic domination" of many African countries by China, or the mess the United States left behind after its attempted "military conquest" of Somalia.

The latter country first became a geopolitical pawn in the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union in their quest to control the Horn of Africa. The US maintained good relations with the murderous regime of Siad Barre until he was ousted, the country disintegrated into lawless anarchy and the US fled tail-between-its-legs after its "Black Hawk down" tragedy at the hands of marauding war lords.

Today the US has indirectly returned to Somalia, supporting one faction in the conflict there against the Islamist movement al-Shabaab, which is blamed for the deepening crisis. But this time the US military is not openly involved.

Instead, according to a number of respected media sources, Washington has sent Richard Rouget, a French-born mercenary to Magadishu to head a 40-man team of "mentors" who are training a "peace-keeping" force in Somalia. Rouget works for a private Washington-based security company and has a criminal record and suspected ties to several African coups and a murder. He also once was the right-hand man of erstwhile mercenary supremo Bob Denard.

Former British, French and, sadly yes, South African soldiers are among those working with him. The US State Department is funding Rouget's company, yet everybody knows to what destructive levels these types of clandestine US operations usually develop.

African countries also refused to allow the US to base its military Africa Command – one of 10 US Armed Forces regional commands around the world – on African soil. Instead, it was forced to base the command in Germany "until 2012" when it will review the situation.

General William E. Ward, [former] commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) , has recently paid several visits to Botswana as part of sharply increased military cooperation between the two countries. It was that and the rumour that the US was to set up a base in Botswana which led South Africa's ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema to make his infamous statement regarding his organisation's support for regime change in Botswana, a statement that now has him in trouble with South Africa's ruling party.

Meanwhile, a group calling itself Concerned Africans, of which Vusi Gumede is a member, has authored an open letter to all the peoples of Africa and the world, drafting it within the context of the United Nations having failed the world, and particularly Africa, through taking inappropriate decisions.

"As concerned Africans we have no choice but to stand up and reassert our right and duty to determine our destiny in Libya and everywhere else on our continent," writes Gumede. He points out the ingenuous manner in which Nato interpreted and implemented the UN Security Council resolution to impose a "no-fly zone" over Libya, a decision into which South Africa had also naively been suckered into supporting.

Along with South Africa, many African countries and the other BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] countries all condemned France and Britain's arrogant move to use only military means instead of the proclaimed "use of all means" to protect Libyan civilians, and their further move to shift the campaign from protecting civilians to implementing regime change at all costs in Libya. In the end many, many civilians were killed – not protected – by Nato's relentless bombing campaign, with Libya's vast oil resources of course being the ultimate prize.

Ironically it started at the United Nations in which South Africa's greatest living leader, Nelson Mandela, had such faith when international deliberations were under way as to whether or not the US and Britain should invade Iraq to rid it of its alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction...weapons it never had.

At the time Mandela said: "There is one compromise and one only, and that is the United Nations. If the United States and Britain go to the United Nations and the United Nations says we have concrete evidence of the existence of these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we feel that we must do something about it, we would all support it."

Britain and the US eventually did as they pleased anyhow – they invaded on the basis of their lie and the pretext that they would save millions of lives by doing so. On a similar pretext of humanitarian aid and saving lives, Britain and France abused the UN Security Council resolution to invade Libya and effect regime change.

Several commendable initiatives by the African Union in which South Africa played a leading role and which sought a negotiated settlement in Libya that would avoid a bloodbath, were simply ignored by Britain, France and their Nato allies. Africa was not allowed the space to bring about an African solution to an African problem.

"Therefore Africa and the developing world are right to be appalled, as Libyans are Africans and are part of the developing world that has suffered a lot under imperialism and colonialism. Libyans have paid, and will continue to pay, with their lives for the Western agenda of regime change," writes Gumede.

Indeed.

http://www.leadershiponline.co.za/articles/sports/1529-out-of-africa

Ireland closure of Vatican embassy angers Catholic church leaders

2011-11-25T17:42:00.001-08:00

guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 November 2011 08.25 EDT

The leader of Ireland's Catholics has criticised the republic's government for closing its embassy to Vatican City.

Cardinal Sean Brady expressed his "profound disappointment" over the move, which comes after diplomatic clashes this year between the Fine Gael-Labour coalition and the Holy See over the Vatican's handling of the clerical child sex abuse scandals in Ireland.

"This decision seems to show little regard for the important role played by the Holy See in international relations and of the historic ties between the Irish people and the Holy See over many centuries," the cardinal said on Friday.

The Irish foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, said the decision followed a review of overseas missions which gave "particular attention to the economic return from bilateral missions".

Gilmore said the government had also decided to close Ireland's embassies to Iran as well as its representative office in Timor-Leste He said the coalition was obliged to implement cuts to meet targets set out in the EU/IMF rescue programme for the Irish economy.

The foreign minister pointed out that the closure of the three embassies would save about €1.25m (£1.1m) a year. He said that while the embassy to the Holy See was one of Ireland's oldest missions, it yielded no economic return, and that Ireland's interests could be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador. The administration will be seeking the agreement of the Holy See to the appointment of a senior diplomat to this position, he added.

Gilmore stressed that the closure of the embassy in the Holy See was not related to the recalling of the Papal Nuncio from Ireland this year. He added that the government would not be selling Villa Spada, the Irish embassy in the Vatican. Instead, staff working in the embassy to Italy in Rome, which is a rented premises, will be transferred to Villa Spada.

The Vatican also said every state was "free to decide, on the basis of its possibilities and its interests, whether to have an ambassador to the Holy See resident in Rome or in another country. What is important is diplomatic relations between the Holy See and states, and these are not in question with regard to Ireland."

The prestigious Villa Spada is the most valuable property owned by the diplomatic service. The Vatican was among the first states with which the newly independent Irish Free State established full diplomatic relations in the 1920s.

The Story of the Indian Diaspora in Malaysia and Singapore

2011-11-25T17:39:00.001-08:00

Life as a non-muslim woman in Islamic countries

2011-11-25T06:47:00.001-08:00

Egypt:

Pakistan:

Christian Girls Kidnapped & Forcibly Married in the Punjab

Posted on November 2, 2011 by alaiwah

The forced marriages of religious minority women must be annulled and the victims returned to their families and communities
The forced conversion to Islam of women from religious minority groups through rape and abduction has reached an alarming stage which challenges interfaith harmony due to the total collapse of the rule of law and biased attitude of the judicial officers. It appears today that no one, from the judiciary to the police and even the government has the courage to stand up to the threats from Muslim fundamentalist groups. The situation is worse with the police who always side with the Islamic groups and treat minority groups as lowly life forms.
The dark side of the forced conversion to Islam is not restricted only to the religious Muslim groups but also involves the criminal elements who are engage in rape and abduction and then justify their heinous crimes by forcing the victims to convert to Islam. The Muslim fundamentalists are happy to offer these criminals shelter and use the excuse that they are providing a great service to their sacred cause of increasing the population of Muslims.
In a recent case of rape and forced conversion to Islam which occurred in the month of August, the owner of a kiln factory, Muhammad Amin alias Sony, forcibly entered the house of one of his employees, a 13-year-old Christian girl and raped her at gunpoint. Sony then forced the victim to place her fingerprints on a set of marriage papers to provide himself with legal protection if he was to be accused of rape. Anwar Masih, the father of the victim and a resident of Harbans Pura, Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, was working in Sony’s factory for daily wages with his wife and daughter. During August, because of heavy rains the kiln was closed and the victim’s parents went out in search of work leaving their daughter alone in the house.
Immediately following the incident the parents filed a case with the Police. However, to date, the police have not taken action against the accused person as he is a powerful man. Also, he sought the help of a Muslim religious group who has threatened the police that if any case is filed against the rapist the houses of the Christian community will be burned.
On October 22, after many delayed proceedings, the Session Court of Lahore ordered the Harbans Pura police to file the case which should have been done immediately. However, once again the police no action has been taken and the police are avoiding their sworn responsibilities.
In Sony’s factory there are around 70 employees most of whom are Christians. One lady worker who was widowed two years ago has become pregnant and Sony has been forcing her to convert to Islam but the Christian community is trying to prevent it. They have accused Sony of being responsible for the pregnancy and have reported the matter to the police who once again refuse to file a case against him. Instead the police have threatened the Christians with dire consequences should they proceed. This lack of action by the police is due to threats by a Muslim group that the police themselves will suffer dire consequences should they side with the Christians.
There have been many cases reported by the Christian rights groups concerning rape and forced conversion. The following cases which all involve Christian women are but a few:
Sidra Bibi, (14) in the district of Sheikhupura in Punjab, is the daughter of a worker in the cotton industry. A Muslim from the village had his eye on her and began to molest her, and eventually abducted and raped her before threatening her with death. Physically and psychologically abused, the girl became pregnant. She managed to escape from her tormentor and is now back, in a state of exhaustion, with her family. The police have refused to accept her complaint because of the involvement of a Muslim religious group and now the CLAAS lawyers are handling the case.
Tina Barkat, (28), was approached by a Muslim friend who, after being friends with her for several months, asked her to convert to Islam. His family began to read her verses from the Quran, kidnapped and threatened her, and then gave her in marriage to a Muslim family member. Her lawyers have a current action to dissolve the marriage.
The same fate has befallen Samina Ayub, (17), who lives with her family near Lahore. Kidnapped by a Muslim, she was forcibly converted to Islam, and renamed Fatima Bibi and was forced to marry in the Muslim rite. Her family reported the abduction but the police have not prosecuted those responsible. The case remains unsolved and the family calls for the mobilisation of civil society to save Samina.
Shazia Bibi, (19) from Gujranwala, worked as a maid in the house of a Muslim woman, the owner of a grocery store. A Muslim boy from the shop fell in love with Shazia and in agreement with the owner, held a conversion and forced her into marriage. The plan was successful but now, thanks to Shazia’s family the case has ended up in court.
Uzma Bibi, (15), from Gulberg, and Saira Bibi, (20), a nurse from Lahore, were taken by force by Muslim neighbours, converted to Islam and then forced to marry in the Islamic rite. The families of the girls have reclaimed their daughters and the cases are currently before the High Court of Lahore, represented by lawyers provided by CLAAS. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 13/4/2011)
Two Christian sisters Rubecca Masih and Saima Masih from Jhung, were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. Both sisters were on their way home when by Muhammad Waseem and his five friends abducted them in and sped off in a vehicle. Muhammad Waseem married Saima Masih the day after her kidnapping.
Jhang is an area where the majority of Muslims are radical. They believe that if a woman marries a Muslim, she automatically embraces the faith of her husband as a direct consequence.
Farah Hatim (24), of Rahim Yar Khan inSouthern Punjab was abducted on May 8, 2011 by Zeeshan Ilyas and his brothers Imran and Gulfam. After this, she was forced to convert to Islam and marry Zeeshan. Human rights organizations and the Catholic Church have condemned the act and demanded action against the violation of her human rights.
The Justice and Peace Commission are leading the case which they took to the Session Court under the FIR, Case No. 150/11US/ 365-B CR.PC. The police have since been threatening the family because of the religious angle. The Session Judge, Khawaja Mir, realised the seriousness of the case and had it transferred to the High Court (the High Court being a higher authority), for hearing due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Once the appeal was taken to the High Court it was presented by the Justice and Peace Commission and APMA (All Pakistan Minorities Alliance). Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman from the High Court Bahawalpur bench instructed the District Police Officer based in Rahim Yar Khan, and the families involved in the case, to appear.
The Judge questioned Farah Hatim as to whether she was kidnapped or went with Zeeshan by her own free will. After a few moments of silence, she replied, “I went with my own will”. After a few more questions, the judge announced that Farah would be living with her new family. The young woman broke into tears as the court announced the decision.
It is unclear if the High Court took note of other cases involving women who have been kidnapped or if the High Court took into account the consideration of fear.
Farah Hatim was allowed a few moments to meet with her family. Her brother said, “I am shocked at what Farah said in the court, she was under threat, now all hopes are gone for her return. Why us? Why did we have to face this? Only because we are Christians (that we are treated like this).”
According to the Justice and Peace Commission, “Farah became a victim of the racket that is involved in prostitution. Zeehan IIyas had tried to force her into prostitution while she was a student at the Sheikh Zaid Medical College in Rahim Yar Khan, but she refused. Then Zeehan IIyas took his revenge. The current decision by Farah is possibly because she is pregnant and fears that her family will be killed if she tries to go back. Therefore, even if she had taken a brave stance of returning, she wouldn’t have been accepted by society as she was kidnapped and raped. The fear of rejection is also a possible reason?”
The Justice and Peace Commission commented that ”thousands of girls from minorities are kidnapped and forced into marriages (against their will)”. The Justice and Peace Commission also stated that ”we are fighting against the cancer of kidnapping and forced marriages”.
Therefore, it is more than evident that the legal system and other important institutions are failing the religious minorities in Pakistanand women can become victims at any time.
Ironically these realities are a continuous issue for Christians, Hindus and other religious minorities and generally it is thought that the purpose behind this action by Islamic fundamentalists is to make Pakistan pure. The religious minorities reside in fear because legal institutions and other institutions are either biased or live in fear of the militant religious groups themselves.
Approximately 90 percent of the Christians and Hindus are the poorest of the poor and live in slum areas. They are forced to do the jobs of scavengers, sweepers, garbage collectors and other types of the lowest menial work. Their access to education is limited.
This is a basic issue of the rule of law in that the police take it upon themselves to act as judge and jury when it comes to a conflict between Islam and the religious minorities. They decide which FIRs to accept and even then when they deign to record the complaints they seldom make any investigations into the cases unless ordered to do so by a court. And even then, they delay the issue for as long as possible. An FIR is the first step in the registration of a complaint and every police station has the non-transferable duty to record them. It is very simply not their choice to decide which FIR to file. No action can be taken into a complaint until the FIR has been registered and therefore this alone is ample evidence that the police collude with the perpetrators.
Similarly, the lower judiciary fails in their responsibilities. In the vast majority of cases the judicial officers, including magistrates and judges question the traumatised victim in open court in full view of her family members, the alleged perpetrators and complete strangers. They do not considered the sensitivity of the feelings of the victim and pay no attention to the sanctity of the women, regardless of their religion.
All of this is a direct result of the government’s appeasement policy towards the Muslim fundamentalist groups. Whether out of fear of a religious uprising that might dethrone the existing government or genuine feelings of the righteousness of what they are doing, is not known. What is known is that if the government does not take a firm stand against religious extremism they can hardly expect the judiciary and the police to do so. Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan clear states that protection must be provided to all citizens regardless of their religion.

Modern Day Slavery In Saudi Arabia

2011-11-25T06:25:00.001-08:00

And the history of Slavery by Arabs

Tears as Kenyans suffer in slavery in Saudi Arabia

2011-11-25T06:22:00.001-08:00

The Standard
10/09/2011

By Joe Kiarie

A fortnight ago, Asha Ali from Likoni, Mombasa, sent an SoS to her parents claiming something terrible was about to happen to her in Saudi Arabia.

The 22-year-old, who left for The Gulf in March, said she has been extremely starved, forced to work for up to six households, and that she was about to be sold out to a slave master in Dubai.

"Mama huyu baba jana aliniuliza nataka kununuliwa wala la, naogopa ataniuwa. Kama Mungu ameandika nitakufa Saudia sina cha kufanya. Mama bye," (Mum, yesterday my boss asked me if I want to be sold or not. I fear he might kill me.

Fatuma, who recently fell off a ladder while working, [PHOTOS: MAARUFU MOHAMMED]

If it is God’s plan that I die in Saudi Arabia, there is nothing I can do. Bye mum) read one of three messages sent to her mother, Mwanaisha Mohamed. Ms Asha has not communicated since, and her fate remains unknown. When contacted by The Standard On Sunday, Yusuf Ibrahim, the Mombasa branch manager of the agency that recruited Asha, could neither explain her whereabouts nor her condition.

Inhuman treatment

This is a plain illustration of the untold misery thousands of Kenyan migrant workers are facing in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other parts of the Persian Gulf under circumstances that exemplify utter modern-day slavery.

It comes amid damning revelations of how deceitful recruitment agents have been helping promote this servitude.

With about 40, 000 Kenyan migrants working in Saudi Arabia, and over 400 of them deported in the last four months, the personal accounts of girls still in captivity abroad are disquieting. They paint a picture of a kingdom where upon entry; most workers have no choice but to surrender their travel documents along with their human rights and dignity to employers.

The most common violations include sexual assault; overwork with no pay, torture, lack of privacy and starvation. Chilling murders sum it all, with the recent discovery of a body of a Kenyan girl locked up in a freezer adding to statistics of unexplained murders of migrants in The Gulf. Fatuma Masoud, a mother of four from Kisauni, also sent an SoS to Mombasa last weekend. She recently fell off a ladder while cleaning her boss’s home at Al Khudar, Saudi Arabia and suffered a fracture to her back. But she continues to be overworked and cannot access any medical help.

"I am always locked in; eat smelly food or leftovers, one meal a day. I am a Kenyan, please help me get out of here, alert my embassy. You are my last hope," she wrote. When contacted, her employer, Hussein al Doussary, claimed to be unaware of the situation. Ms Fatuma is yet to receive any help. Most survivors make it back to Kenya with broken limbs. And although their accounts mirror scripts akin to gruesome movies, they are the reality.

Devious recruitment agents

"My boss’ family locked me in at all times and forced me to work while stark naked to ensure I neither escaped nor stole anything in the house," notes a lady who recently fled Saudi Arabia, but who seeks anonymity. As this unfolds, the Government has been busy echoing human rights activists in decrying the form of slavery and admitting its helplessness in seeking a solution, raising questions regarding whom these innocent Kenyans should turn to.

This maze of servitude starts with devious job recruitment agents, who have established complex international networks via which they rake in millions of shillings for shipping out unsuspecting workers. With average profits of between Sh300,000 and Sh400,000 per every person delivered, the agents have stood at nothing to entrap as many Kenyans as possible, whether voluntarily or by force.

To enhance efficiency, they subcontract the recruitment phase to local brokers across the country. Salma Bakari, a seasoned negotiator for various Saudi agents in Mombasa, terms the business irresistible. "I have been receiving Sh10,000 in cash for every employee delivered while others get up to Sh20,000. At some point, the girls were so many I could get 30 of them monthly," she reveals.

Ms Salma says they traverse villages countrywide to lure girls into taking up jobs abroad. "They just give us their national identity cards and those of their parents. The agents help process passports and visas. The girls are then taken to Nairobi for a medical examination before flying out, with the agents footing the bills," she notes. She divulges that a group of 20 girls departed for The Gulf last Wednesday night while another leaves on Monday.

Contrary to popular belief, majority of job-seekers who migrate to The Gulf are from middle-class income families, possess some tertiary training and do so voluntarily. Ironically, most of them play an active role, and even incur debts, trying to finance their migration.

Khalid Hussein, the Muslims for Human Rights (Muhuri) executive director, says about 80 per cent of the migrant workers are Muslim girls aged between 22 and 35 years. The girls are usually promised lucrative jobs as saleswomen, housekeepers, hotel attendants, drivers, waiters, and chefs.

"Most of them are usually employed and doing similar jobs locally, earning an average of Sh10,000 per month. But they find promises of jobs that fetch up to Sh80,000 irresistible, sign contracts and depart, oblivious of what awaits them," Khalid explains.

He says reality dawns on the migrants once they reach Dammam in Riyadh and are packed into a warehouse that serves as a ‘slave’ market.

"At this point, you must surrender your passport. You can stay here for weeks and all you get is food. The locals usually visit this warehouse to choose the persons they like and force them to serve as cleaners, nannies, cooks or gardeners. Protests of being shortchanged are futile since one has already officially agreed to be owned," Mr Khalid states.

Warehouse auction

Salma confides that while some agents usually take the girls directly to new employers, others take the girls to the warehouse and auction them for up to a month.

Once enslaved, Khalid says majority of the women are susceptible to extreme human rights violation. But with no friends, relatives of law enforcers to help them, desperate efforts to force their own deportation always prove futile.

"In a day, we receive two to three cases of enslaved Kenyans who want to return back home due to exploitation. Currently, we have 17 cases of sick women detained in Dammam awaiting deportation," notes the director, whose organisation has now opened a hotline to specifically deal with the crisis in Saudi Arabia.

With slavery outlawed, it is believed the locals subtly use contracts to legitimise and camouflage this custom. For a migrant to work in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, she must first secure a visa via a sponsorship system called kafala. This is a routine practice among Gulf Cooperation Council states used to regulate residency and employment of foreign workers. Under it, expatriate workers can only enter, work, and leave member countries with the consent of their sponsor or a local employer. A worker’s salary, stay, meals, ability to work elsewhere, and even ability to return home are thus entirely at the mercy of employers.

Khalid notes that although both the sponsor and the employee can break the contract, this apparent equality is a mere veil considering that if the worker breaks her contract; she must pay the cost of her return ticket (a fee that the employer would have otherwise paid). She may also be fined or forced to pay debts to the recruitment agency, thus forcing her to continue working.

Once at their workplaces, and without official documents in foreign land, migrants fall under the charge of female employers. Most Middle Eastern households often consist of extended families and this translates to gruelling work that normally includes tasks like cleaning, washing, cooking, tailoring, and taking care of children and the aged.

Working hours range between 11 and 18 hours a day, with the maid obliged to work day and night.

As Asha reveals, she has alongside a Philippine colleague, been working day and night for several households daily. Saudi Arabia officially banned slave trade as recently as 1962, followed by the United Arab Emirates in 1963.

The victims’ plight

The following is a list of some Kenyan girls who have faced servitude in the Gulf.

Carol Wangui

After just three weeks of torture in Saudi Arabia, Wangui forced her deportation last Monday. She is nursing serious back injuries and has stitches following abuse by her employer.

Mariam Zuberi

Has complained of working under very harsh conditions and general mistreatment since flying to Saudi Arabia eight months ago. She has also never been paid and efforts by her family to bring her back home have failed.

Makuu Morocha

Her family has lost touch with her ever since she left Kenya. Even the agent who helped her secure employment claims not to know of her contacts and whereabouts.

Bahati Ramadhan

Bahati has not received a salary for the past one and a half years and neither has she been allowed to return home. She has reported being subjected to severe physical abuse.

Amina Jundo

Has been complaining that she is unwell and not receiving any medical treatment as well as a salary for the past six months.

Binti Saidi

Ceased communicating upon arrival in Saudi Arabia over a year ago. Efforts to have her agent intervene have been futile.

Ushi Hussein

Has complained of being very sick and extremely overworked since October last year. Her pleas to be deported have failed.

Rosemay Wanjiku

Has been held incommunicado in Tabouk, Jeddah ince June this year.

Persecuted Hindus migrating from Islamic Pakistan in hordes

2011-11-18T18:34:00.001-08:00

The News International Pakistan

Saher Baloch
Friday, November 18, 2011

A year back, when Himesh Kumar’s* son was kidnapped from outside his school, he knew he had to do something drastic.

He had been getting phone calls for extortion for quite some time, but he had ignored them — thinking they were mere threats.

As a contractor working in Malir for the past 12 years, Kumar got the shock of his life when he was informed by his driver one afternoon that his eight-year-old son, Nitin*, had been kidnapped. Fortunately, his elder kid, a 13-year-old girl, was spared.

After a gruelling few months of negotiations with the kidnappers, Nitin was finally released. As soon as he saw his son, Kumar arranged for the family to move to India. Informing a few close friends, they wound up their business and left quietly.

Draupati Mandhan, a mother of two, left her home in Jacobabad in the month of Ramazan to move to Karachi to pursue a career in medicine.

After months of house-hunting in the city, she zeroed in on a small apartment, owned by an old man, in Delhi Colony. The rent was reasonable and the place was comfortable.

“My husband had to stay back to settle the old debts that we had in Jacobabad. So I came alone with the children.”

But all her excitement of shifting to a big city vanished when the owner did not let her in the house. Embarrassed but still forcing a smile, she says that at first she did not understand the man. “But then he started calling me and my children Paleet (impure) and asked me to forget about the deal.”

Completely at a loss, she frantically phoned her husband. “Thankfully, I had enough money. But the thought of my staying at a hotel did not go well with my husband.”

She eventually stayed at a friend’s house for a few days and went back until another place was arranged. Even today, she is unable to comprehend what had happened to her.

The Cover-up

The patron-in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council says over 200 Hindu families from different areas of Karachi have left Pakistan in the last couple of months.

The Pew Research Centre of Religion and Public Life has rated Pakistan the third least tolerant country in terms of religious diversity while the recent killing of three Hindus in Shikarpur has set alarm bells ringing for the minority community living in Sindh for centuries.

Amarnath Motumal, Vice-Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Sindh, gave a politically correct statement at first when asked about the fate of minorities. “Pakistan is secure enough for us than India; the present government is doing a lot for minorities.”

But when prodded a bit and given examples of the recent cases, he slightly changed his stance. “There is lawlessness and insecurity. Those who are rich are leaving in hordes but the poor are bound to suffer in silence.”

Forced Conversion

Ramesh Kumar Wankwani, the patron in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council, was way more candid. “A case of forced conversion takes place in Sindh almost every week.”

Over 93 percent of all Hindus in Pakistan live in Sindh. The recent abductions of Hindu girls from Khairpur, Dadu and Jacobabad have forced the Hindu families to flee their ancestral villages where they had been living for hundreds of years. In Ghotki alone, the locals say, as many as 800 families have fled.

Wankwani claims that most of such cases go unreported as families cover up victimisation to avoid public humiliation. “And when they do seek help, the police never co-operate. Most of the families, who have reported incidents of victimisation to the police, come back with complaints that the police have refused to register an FIR. It is only through contacts that you get an FIR registered.”

No official figures on forced conversions are available but the HRCP believes that the numbers are high.

In most cases, young Hindu girls are abducted, converted, and forced to marry Muslim men. In some cases, they have also been forced into prostitution.

In Lyari, 16 girls have been abducted and forced into prostitution so far, according to Wankwani. In the latest case, Poonam Wasu was drugged and married off to her friend’s brother. Fortunately, she ran away and was reunited with her family. For Poonam’s family, migration is not an option as they are willing to fight.

Banu, from a scheduled caste family, was abducted in the beginning of 2010 and is still missing. Her father, Devjee, is looking for a job at the age of 55 to arrange money to fight his daughter’s case in court.

In 2007, Wankwani filed a petition in the Sindh High Court against forced conversions. Four years have gone by and he is still hopeful that something concrete would come out of it. “I have a firm belief in the judicial system of Pakistan. Let’s see.”

Kidnapping for Ransom

Kidnapping for ransom is another cause of concern for Hindu families. Dr Khushal Das, the founder of the Rajput Veterinary Services, is awaiting he safe recovery of his two nieces for the last two months. The two women were on their way to Dr Das’s home when they were kidnapped from Bahadurabad. One was a 27-year-old mother of two and other a 21-year-old student.

Dr Das received a call from his frantic sister-in-law that her daughters had not come back home. “They had left around 2 in the afternoon and my Bhabhi called me around 2 at night,” he said.

In a hushed tone, he said that what was more shocking to him was the attitude of the authorities. “I have given 30 years of my life to this city and after this incident people are behaving as if they do not know me at all,” he said with a rueful smile.

The only time he felt a bit hopeful was when he received a missed call on his mobile phone one night. Cautious, he informed the police who told him that the call was made from Abbottabad which was out of their jurisdiction.

But the apathetic attitude of the police did not disappoint him. He went from person to person of the higher ranks to find some clue to his missing nieces. “I am financially secure and can pay money to get my nieces back. But tell me honestly would someone want to stay in this country after such an incident?”

‘Flawed’ Education System

Sitting in his well-decorated office, with Jinnah’s portrait hanging high on a wall, Misri Ladhani, a government officer, blames the flawed education system for migration of his community members.

This year, Ladhani, a self-confessed patriot, completes 30 years in Pakistan. Brought up in a religiously diverse neighbourhood, Ladhani says it was different in the beginning. “We would sit and speak for hours with our neighbours. I never remember my mother locking the entrance door of our home. It was open for everyone,” he gets nostalgic.

With the start of Ziaul Haq’s era, things started dilapidating. “Unfortunately no one took notice of the fact that our nation was headed towards a downward spiral”, he explains.

The radicalisation that followed had long-lasting effects, but Ladhani believes that despite blaming external factors, one should look inward. “This is where the prejudice comes from.”

Last month, he moved the Sindh High Court on behalf of his son against the compulsion of studying Islamiat in O levels. In his appeal, he stated that the subjects subscribed to the O level students were Islamic Religious Culture and Islamiat for Muslims. However, there was no apparent choice for the minority students to study anything other than Ethics.

Due to this, he said, his son was unable to get an equivalence certificate to appear in the MBBS entrance exam. The SHC promptly allowed the boy to appear in the entry test.

But Ladhani feels that the problem is much deeper than that. He argues that after studying Islamiat from third standard till intermediate, their children would show as much interest in their own scriptures.

Most of the Hindu children opt for Islamiat because they can easily get distinction in it. “Whereas you get only passing marks in Ethics,” he raises his brows. “The competition should be fair. How about teaching our children Bhagwat Geeta and Ramayana at schools?”

Taking a pause, he cautiously speaks about his daughter. She has married a Muslim man. That came as a shock to many in their community, but he stood by his daughter’s decision. “After all, what can parents do in such a situation?”

But he feared that the marriage might invite the wrath of the radicals. So the first thing he did after getting them married was to ask them to leave the country.

Himesh Kumar* is happily settled in Bangalore now. He has a good job and he does not have to constantly worry about his family. But he misses home. “No matter where I live, I’ll always be a Pakistani,” he told The News on phone.

Wankwani claims that those who have left are still willing to come back. “But equal rights, self-respect and equal opportunities are something that every citizen wants, no matter what religion they belong to.”

* Names changed to protect privacy

Scenes from 'Vanguard' TV series - islamic areas in Britian

2011-11-12T18:50:00.001-08:00

Pakistan: Forced Marriages Of Religious Minority Women

2011-11-09T04:46:00.000-08:00

From Scoop, NZ

Friday, 28 October 2011, 9:40 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission

Pakistan: Forced Marriages Of Religious Minority Women
Friday, 28 October 2011, 9:40 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission

AHRC-STM-159-2011October 25, 2011

A Statement from the Asian Human Rights Commission

The forced conversion to Islam of women from religious minority groups through rape and abduction has reached an alarming stage which challenges interfaith harmony due to the total collapse of the rule of law and biased attitude of the judicial officers. It appears today that no one, from the judiciary to the police and even the government has the courage to stand up to the threats from Muslim fundamentalist groups. The situation is worse with the police who always side with the Islamic groups and treat minority groups as lowly life forms.

The dark side of the forced conversion to Islam is not restricted only to the religious Muslim groups but also involves the criminal elements who are engage in rape and abduction and then justify their heinous crimes by forcing the victims to convert to Islam. The Muslim fundamentalists are happy to offer these criminals shelter and use the excuse that they are providing a great service to their sacred cause of increasing the population of Muslims.

In a recent case of rape and forced conversion to Islam which occurred in the month of August, the owner of a kiln factory, Muhammad Amin alias Sony, forcibly entered the house of one of his employees, a 13-year-old Christian girl and allegedly raped her at gunpoint. Sony then forced the victim to place her fingerprints on a set of marriage papers to provide himself with legal protection if he was to be accused of rape. Anwar Masih, the father of the victim and a resident of Harbans Pura, Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, was working in Sony's factory for daily wages with his wife and daughter. During August, because of heavy rains the kiln was closed and the victim's parents went out in search of work leaving their daughter alone in the house.

Immediately following the incident the parents filed a case with the Harbans Pura Police Station. However, to date, the police have not taken action against the accused person as he is a powerful man. Also, he sought the help of a Muslim religious group who has threatened the police that if any case is filed against the alleged rapist the houses of the Christian community will be burned. On October 22, after many delayed proceedings, the Session Court of Lahore ordered the Harbans Pura police to file the case which should have been done immediately. However, once again the police no action has been taken and the police are avoiding their sworn responsibilities.

In Sony's factory there are around 70 employees most of whom are Christians. One lady worker who was widowed two years ago has become pregnant and Sony has been forcing her to convert to Islam but the Christian community is trying to prevent it. They have accused Sony of being responsible for the pregnancy and have reported the matter to the police who once again refuse to file a case against him. Instead the police have threatened the Christians with dire consequences should they proceed. This lack of action by the police is due to threats by a Muslim group that the police themselves will suffer dire consequences should they side with the Christians.

There have been many cases reported by the Christian rights groups concerning rape and forced conversion. The following cases which all involve Christian women are but a few:

Sidra Bibi, (14) in the district of Sheikhupura in Punjab, is the daughter of a worker in the cotton industry. A Muslim from the village had his eye on her and began to molest her, and eventually abducted and raped her before threatening her with death. Physically and psychologically abused, the girl became pregnant. She managed to escape from her tormentor and is now back, in a state of exhaustion, with her family. The police have refused to accept her complaint because of the involvement of a Muslim religious group and now the CLAAS lawyers are handling the case.

Tina Barkat, (28), was approached by a Muslim friend who, after being friends with her for several months, asked her to convert to Islam. His family began to read her verses from the Quran, kidnapped and threatened her, and then gave her in marriage to a Muslim family member. Her lawyers have a current action to dissolve the marriage.

The same fate has befallen Samina Ayub, (17), who lives with her family near Lahore. Kidnapped by a Muslim, she was forcibly converted to Islam, and renamed Fatima Bibi and was forced to marry in the Muslim rite. Her family reported the abduction but the police have not prosecuted those responsible. The case remains unsolved and the family calls for the mobilisation of civil society to save Samina.

Shazia Bibi, (19) from Gujranwala, in Punjab, worked as a maid in the house of a Muslim woman, the owner of a grocery store. A Muslim boy from the shop fell in love with Shazia and in agreement with the owner, held a conversion and forced her into marriage. The plan was successful but now, thanks to Shazia's family the case has ended up in court.

Uzma Bibi, (15), from Gulberg, and Saira Bibi, (20), a nurse from Lahore, were taken by force by Muslim neighbours, converted to Islam and then forced to marry in the Islamic rite. The families of the girls have reclaimed their daughters and the cases are currently before the High Court of Lahore, represented by lawyers provided by CLAAS. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 13/4/2011)

Two Christian sisters Rubecca Masih and Saima Masih from Jhung, Punjab province were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. Both sisters were on their way home when by Muhammad Waseem and his five friends abducted them in and sped off in a vehicle. Muhammad Waseem married Saima Masih the day after her kidnapping. Jhang is an area where the majority of Muslims are radical. They believe that if a woman marries a Muslim, she automatically embraces the faith of her husband as a direct consequence.

Farah Hatim (24), of Rahim Yar Khan in Southern Punjab was abducted on May 8, 2011 by Zeeshan Ilyas and his brothers Imran and Gulfam. After this, she was forced to convert to Islam and marry Zeeshan. Human rights organizations and the Catholic Church have condemned the act and demanded action against the violation of her human rights.

The Justice and Peace Commission are leading the case which they took to the Session Court under the FIR, Case No. 150/11 US/ 365-B CR.PC. The police have since been threatening the family because of the religious angle. The Session Judge, Khawaja Mir, realised the seriousness of the case and had it transferred to the High Court (the High Court being a higher authority), for hearing due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Once the appeal was taken to the High Court it was presented by the Justice and Peace Commission and APMA (All Pakistan Minorities Alliance). Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman from the High Court Bahawalpur bench instructed the District Police Officer based in Rahim Yar Khan, and the families involved in the case, to appear.

The Judge questioned Farah Hatim as to whether she was kidnapped or went with Zeeshan by her own free will. After a few moments of silence, she replied, "I went with my own will". After a few more questions, the judge announced that Farah would be living with her new family. The young woman broke into tears as the court announced the decision.

It is unclear if the High Court took note of other cases involving women who have been kidnapped or if the High Court took into account the consideration of fear.

Farah Hatim was allowed a few moments to meet with her family. Her brother said, "I am shocked at what Farah said in the court, she was under threat, now all hopes are gone for her return. Why us? Why did we have to face this? Only because we are Christians (that we are treated like this)."

According to the Justice and Peace Commission, "Farah became a victim of the racket that is involved in prostitution. Zeehan IIyas had tried to force her into prostitution while she was a student at the Sheikh Zaid Medical College in Rahim Yar Khan, but she refused. Then Zeehan IIyas took his revenge. The current decision by Farah is possibly because she is pregnant and fears that her family will be killed if she tries to go back. Therefore, even if she had taken a brave stance of returning, she wouldn't have been accepted by society as she was kidnapped and raped. The fear of rejection is also a possible reason?"

The Justice and Peace Commission commented that ''thousands of girls from minorities are kidnapped and forced into marriages (against their will)''. The Justice and Peace Commission also stated that ''we are fighting against the cancer of kidnapping and forced marriages''.

Therefore, it is more than evident that the legal system and other important institutions are failing the religious minorities in Pakistan and women can become victims at any time.

Ironically these realities are a continuous issue for Christians, Hindus and other religious minorities and generally it is thought that the purpose behind this action by Islamic fundamentalists is to make Pakistan pure. The religious minorities reside in fear because legal institutions and other institutions are either biased or live in fear of the militant religious groups themselves.

Approximately 90 percent of the Christians and Hindus are the poorest of the poor and live in slum areas. They are forced to do the jobs of scavengers, sweepers, garbage collectors and other types of the lowest menial work. Their access to education is very limited.

This is a very basic issue of the rule of law in that the police take it upon themselves to act as judge and jury when it comes to a conflict between Islam and the religious minorities. They decide which FIRs to accept and even then when they deign to record the complaints they seldom make any investigations into the cases unless ordered to do so by a court. And even then, they delay the issue for as long as possible. An FIR is the first step in the registration of a complaint and every police station has the non-transferable duty to record them. It is very simply not their choice to decide which FIR to file. No action can be taken into a complaint until the FIR has been registered and therefore this alone is ample evidence that the police collude with the perpetrators.

Similarly, the lower judiciary fails in their responsibilities. In the vast majority of cases the judicial officers, including magistrates and judges question the traumatised victim in open court in full view of her family members, the alleged perpetrators and complete strangers. They do not considered the sensitivity of the feelings of the victim and pay no attention to the sanctity of the women, regardless of their religion.

All of this is a direct result of the government's appeasement policy towards the Muslim fundamentalist groups. Whether out of fear of a religious uprising that might dethrone the existing government or genuine feelings of the righteousness of what they are doing, is not known. What is known is that if the government does not take a firm stand against religious extremism they can hardly expect the judiciary and the police to do so. Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan clear states that protection must be provided to all citizens regardless of their religion.

The Asian Human Rights Commission strongly urges the government of President Zardari to stand behind the Constitution and ensure protection to each and every citizen of Pakistan.

The cases mentioned above, in which FIRs have been filed, must be properly investigated.

The perpetrators must be brought to trial, prosecuted and made to answer for the heinous crime of rape, especially against under aged girls.

The police officers who turn a blind eye and refuse to take action against the perpetrators must face the most severe disciplinary action. Once again, especially where under aged girls are the victims.

Those marriages which were forcefully or illegally conducted must be annulled forthwith and the girls and women given the choice of returning to their families and communities.

In view of the fact that apostasy is forbidden in Islam the government must take steps to cancel any and all conversions that have been done under duress. The Christian and Hindu women who have been forcibly converted must be provided with a safe environment to decide which religion they wish to follow.

Gang rape of Hindu and Christian girls: Open letter to Pakistan President Zardari

2011-11-09T04:42:00.000-08:00

From TwoCirlces

October 14, 2011

To

Mr. Asif Ali Zardari
President of Pakistan
President's Secretariat
Islamabad, PAKISTAN

Dear Mr. President,

We, the following social activists and members of the web-based online forum The Moderates, have come to know about a dastardly incident that has taken place in your country through a news release of the Asian Human Rights Commission. Here is the link to the report:http://www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent-appeals/AHRC-UAC-199-2011

Attention: A 12 year-old Christian girl has been gang-raped, detained for eight months, forcibly converted and 'married' to her Muslim attacker

Name of victim: Miss Anna (not her real name) 12, daughter of Arif Masih, employed as street sweeper at WAPDA, resident of quarter number 44, WAPDA colony, Shahdra, Lahore, capital of Punjab province,

Place of incident: WAPDA Quarters resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
Date of incident: December 24, 2010

Names of alleged perpetrators:
1. Muhammad Irfan, (rapist) resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
2. Muhammad Irshad, (rapist) resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
3. Mumtaz Bibi.resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
4. Farzana Bibi.resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
5. Kiran Bibi resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
6. Nida, resident of Shadra, factory area, Lahore, Punjab province
7. Station House Officer (SHO), factory area police station, Shadra, Lahore, Punjab province,

We are writing to voice our deep concern regarding the gang rape of this young Christian girl who was then forcibly converted to Islam and then 'married' to one of her attackers by the members of a banned religious organization. As the details of the incident have been well documented in the AHRC report, we would like to refrain from re-stating the horrific story.

The aforesaid report also mentions that as many as 20 to 25 girls from the Hindu community are abducted every month and converted forcibly, according to Amarnath Motumal, an advocate and council member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Many abducted girls are raped, others are never heard from again by their families; all cases involved a struggle to access their right to redress.

While the aforesaid incidents are extremely dastardly and inhuman, a general perception about the human rights situation of minorities in Pakistan can be easily gauged from the recent chain of unfortunate incidents including the assassination of Minorities minister Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab Governor Mr. Salmaan Taseer, for supporting minority rights.

It has also been reported that the judge who awarded death penalty to Taseer’s killer has gone into hiding fearing threats to his own life. It is easily imaginable that if ministers, Governors and judges advocating minority rights are not safe, how difficult it would be for an ordinary citizen to defend his/her human rights in your country.

Mr. President, we believe that defending and upholding minority rights is one of the foremost responsibilities of a healthy democracy. If your country fails to protect its minorities, it may not only affect the democratic credentials of your country but also promote and bolster anti-minority activities in other countries.

So keeping in mind the human, moral, democratic and civic responsibility of a country to protect human rights of its citizens in general, and those of minorities, in particular, we, on behalf of The Moderates , urge you to investigate the case of Miss Anna and prosecute all the perpetrators involved in the gang rape of a 12 year old girl for eight months. We also urge you to provide full protection to the child and her family and the best possible medical treatment and counseling.

Finally, we request you to ask the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan to provide you with the list of the minority community girls who have been abducted, and instruct your law enforcement agencies to trace them and return them to their families, and provide them with protection.

Pakistani police tell family of kidnapped, raped 12-year-old girl to return her to captors

2011-11-09T04:40:00.000-08:00

Beliefnet

Rob Kerby

October 14, 2011

A 12-year-old Christian Pakistani girl was lured away from her home, kidnapped, then repeatedly raped by her captors for eight months — who now claim that she is married to one of the kidnappers.

The girl escaped and returned home, however police have warned her parents it would be best if she willingly returned to her captors to avoid “further trouble.”

As a result, the entire Christian family has gone into hiding. She was lured on a shopping trip in the city of Lahore by a friend, but then driven 120 miles to the village of Tandianwalla where she was sexually abused, reports Wil Longbottom in the British newspaper the Daily Mail.

Then she was forced to sign papers consenting to marriage with one of her captors and beaten for refusing to convert from Christianity to Islam.

In a special report Asian Human Rights Commission has said the rapists have not been arrested because of their affiliation with a militant Muslim organization – the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. In fact, the report notes:

The police have warned the Christian parents that it would be better to hand over the girl to her ‘legal’ husband (the rapist) otherwise a criminal case will be filed against them.

The child, “Anna” — whose last name has been withheld — is the daughter of Arif Masih, a street sweeper. The commission reports that a friend came to her house and asked her to go shopping:

In the first week of September 2011, more than eight months after her disappearance, Anna called her family from Tandianwalla, district Faisalabad, 190 kilometers from Lahore, and told them that she had been abducted but had escaped and was hiding at a bus stop. The parents went there and recovered her. She was brought back to her home and the parents produced her before the First Class Magistrate who recorded her statement but did not order any action for her protection or a medical checkup.
The rapists then immediately contacted the police through their religious group and produced a marriage certificate showing that one of them, Muhammad Irfan, was married to her.

When her parents attempted to file rape and kidnapping charges, police refused, saying she had married and converted to Islam — although the legal age for marriage in Pakistan is 16.
The parents were told ”it would be better to hand over the girl to her legal husband. If they refused they were told that a criminal case would be filed against them.”
The commission notes:

The Christian family is in hiding from the rapists and the police.
According to the Christian community, the religious extremists, who are from a banned organization, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, are searching them. The abductors are claiming that she is pregnant but her mother denies that this is true.

The British Pakistani Christian Association has launched a petition calling on the Pakistani government to investigate the attack.

Pakistan: Rape as a Tool for Conversion to Islam

2011-11-09T04:35:00.001-08:00

Thursday, 20 October 2011 16:57
New American

For Zubaida Bibi, a Christian woman working in a garment factory in the Korangi Industrial Area of Karachi, Pakistan, the workday on October 12 at Crescent Enterprises probably began like most. Her job as a custodian helped make it possible for her to care for her children. But before her shift was over, a Muslim worker at the factory attempted to rape her, and then slit her throat, leaving four orphans without a mother to care for them. And the case of Zubaida Bibi is far from unique: In Pakistan, the phenomena of Islamic men raping Christian women is becoming more common.
An October 18 story for PakistanChristianPost.com relates some of the details of the tragic death of Zubaida Bibi:

On October 12, 2011, during duty hours, Zubaida Bibi entered to clean factory bathrooms when one Muslim employee named Mohammad Asif followed her and locked door behind him.

When Mohammad Asif attempted to sexually assault Zubaida Bibi, she cried for help on which Mohammad Asif took out a dagger and slit the throat of Zubaida Bibi.

The factory management called police help and Mohammad Asif was arrested on crime scene where throat cut dead body of Zubaida Bibi was lying on floor.

One might want to imagine that the case of Zubaida Bibi was isolated, or that the assault and murder of this woman had nothing to do with the religious beliefs of the alleged murderer and his victim. However, the truth is that in Islamic societies such as Pakistan, it is not at all uncommon for Muslims to get away without punishment for raping Christian women.
The situation in Pakistan has reached the point that at Persecution.org, a website for International Christian Concern, it was noted in an article for October 4:

Many Christian girls are raped at the hands of Muslims in Pakistan. Rape has been used as a weapon of persecution against Christian girls in Pakistan, a country where Christians are treated as third-class citizens. In the Muslim majority country, Christian girls are particularly vulnerable to these types of crimes because Muslim authorities are reluctant to protect them when their rights are violated by Muslims.

According to Compass Direct News, a Christian mother of five said that she was raped by two Pakistani Muslims on September 15th. In January, Muhammad Aftab was arrested after raping six Christian girls at different times.

The president of the Pakistan Christian Congress, Dr. Nazir Bhatti, told us, “The incidents of rape and enforced conversion of Christian women to Islam is rising every year. 99.9% of rape cases go unreported in Pakistan… If a Muslim man rapes a Christian girl, then he easily forces her to convert to Islam, marries her and covers up his heinous crime of rape under Islamic law. Some cases of rapes of Christian women are reported, but the majority of such rapes are never reported.”

The Pakistan Christian Post article regarding Zubaida Bibi made essentially the same observation:

There are rising incidents of sexual harassment against Christian women workers on workplaces in Pakistan which go unreported due to cultural and social values. The influential Muslims feel free to kidnap and rape Christian women in Pakistan where Islamic laws protect culprits. In kidnap and rape cases against Christian women, the Muslim culprits walk free from courts which keep victims silent on such abuses.

A report from the Barnabas Fund was released in September, detailing the widespread problem in Pakistani society of Muslim men kidnapping Christian girls and forcing them to marry the very men who abducted them. According to the report, the horrifying tragedy of such a crime is played out hundreds of times every year in Pakistan:

The abduction and forced conversion to Islam of Christian girls who are then married against their will to their captors is a disturbing and growing trend in Pakistan; it is estimated that there are over 700 cases every year. …

The forced conversions and marriages are often carried out by influential Muslim families who threaten and severely beat the young girls to frighten them into compliance, as seemingly happened in the case of Farah Hatim. The authorities rarely take action, and often the young girls never return to their families unless they manage to escape their captors. The girls are often raped and become pregnant, making it almost impossible for the courts to release them.

One father was told by police to “forget his daughters” after the two Christian sisters were abducted, raped and forcibly converted in Faisalabad in May.

Even when a captive does manage to escape, it is by no means the end of her suffering. If a woman leaves her new Muslim family and Islam to return to her Christian background, she is considered an apostate — even though she was forcibly converted — and is therefore liable to be killed.

Such widespread and systematic criminal activity nevertheless remains virtually unknown outside the Muslim world, and attempts to highlight the tragic plight of Christians living under Islam is often dismissed out of hand. However, such crimes — and the attitudes which make them possible — are hardly isolated to Pakistani society; just last year, a controversy erupted in the United Kingdom when a guest on a show for the Islam Channel allegedly advocated marital rape. An observer may reasonably ask: Is it really difficult to believe that if a husband is permitted to rape his wife, is it really difficult to justify the use of such a crime as a means of converting a woman to Islam?
The horrifying case of the murder of Zubaida Bibi is made all the more terrifying by the commonality of the crime which motivated it. Foreign intervention cannot bring about a change in a society which is so fundamentally influenced by a religion which justifies such crimes; but for those who do not yet live under Islam, Bibi’s death is a powerful reminder that the religion embraced by an individual — or a society — shapes the entire lives of those who adhere to that religion.

The Islamic Paradise of Kashmir

2011-11-09T04:21:00.000-08:00

The Terror Trader Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan

2011-11-09T04:15:00.001-08:00

Pakistan: A monster roaming the world

2011-09-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

Paul McGeough
September 3, 2011
SMH

Long haul ... NATO supply convoys assemble near Karachi port before taking the hazardous journey to US-led coalition bases in Afghanistan. Last year more than 150 convoys were attacked.

Long haul ... NATO supply convoys assemble near Karachi port before taking the hazardous journey to US-led coalition bases in Afghanistan. Last year more than 150 convoys were attacked. Photo: Kate Geraghty

The West has spent billions trying to buy Pakistan's friendship but the jihadists are stronger than ever, writes Paul McGeough.

Search for a firm footing in Pakistan and there is none - all is quicksand … strategically, politically, morally.

Here in south Asia, strategically sandwiched between failing Afghanistan and the China and India powerhouses, is a country in which journalists are abducted in the night by agents of the state and murdered; in which the only advance after a decade in which Washington has tried to buy friendship with cheques for more than $20 billion, is the expansion of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - which is on the verge of surpassing Britain's as the fifth biggest in the world.

In Pakistan, a 50-year-old woman is sentenced to death on a dubious blasphemy charge - and politicians who dare to speak in her defence are gunned down; and a woman is gang-raped and paraded naked through her village on the orders of a local council, over bogus claims that her 12-year-old brother has offended a 20-year-old woman from the clan of the men who defiled her.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Death in Islamabad ... Newspapers with headlines about the death of Osama bin Laden, after the al-Qaeda leader was killed in May.

Death in Islamabad ... Newspapers with headlines about the death of Osama bin Laden, after the al-Qaeda leader was killed in May. Photo: Reuters

But that's village life. In the leafy garrison town of Abbottabad, an hour's drive north of Islamabad, Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the attacks of September 11, 2001, was able to hide in plain sight for years. The location of his fortified bunker, a stone's throw from a prestigious military academy, made it harder to give any credence to the generals' repeated denials that significant elements of Pakistan's extensive security apparatus sheltered the al-Qaeda chief and continue to give succour to the Taliban and other insurgency and terrorist movements.

In the south-west, in the wilds of provincial Baluchistan, there have been 150 ''kill and dump'' operations this year. Most of the victims are Baluch nationalist rebels. Their killers are the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and other elements of Pakistan's national security forces - driven to brutality by a belief, which could be correct, that Pakistan's arch foe, India, stirs the local nationalist pot. In turn, the Baluch nationalists are accused of running their own death squads - their victims are Punjabi ''settlers'', government workers brought in from other parts of the country.

Baluchistan is half Pashtun, which also makes it a sanctuary for the Taliban from adjoining Afghanistan, where Washington and the world still struggle, with little success, to impose a semblance of democracy on the bones of a fracturing, failing state. Here then is another of the ironies that puts a serious question mark over the bona fides of the Pakistani security forces: the leadership of the Afghanistan Taliban sequesters in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, but the various Pakistani security services are so busy putting the Baluch nationalists through the mincer they don't have time to take down the Taliban command-and-control centre. Instead, they reportedly socialise with the Taliban and sit in on their strategy meetings.

West from Baluchistan is the sprawling port city of Karachi, where the spiralling death toll in renewed ethnic turf-wars gives raw meaning to what local novelist Kamila Shamsie broaches obliquely, recounting how the city ''winks'' at her. "Yes, the city said, I am a breeding ground for monsters, " she writes, "but don't think that is the full measure of what I am."

This drab, chaotic home to 18 million people who account for 65 per cent of Pakistan's economy is being carved up by bullets that this year have accounted for as many as 1000 ''wrong place, wrong time'' deaths as gunmen randomly select their targets - sending messages to whole communities, not the individuals with whose blood they paint the rough pavements. As the suburbs seethe, police do little, because they are cowed by the systematic elimination of those in their ranks who intervened in the last iteration of these ethnic wars. Provincial and federal governments and the security forces only wring their hands.

In Karachi everyone lies. No one denies turf wars are being waged. They simply blame everyone else - all the political parties deny any links to the militias that prosecute their bloody agendas and to the crime, drug and land-development mafias that prosper in their wake. And the city's once-dominant Urdu-speaking Mohajirs fight to maintain their control of corrupted city politics, amid an influx of Pashtuns fleeing upheavals along the Afghan border.

"Tension rises, we see killings and then scores must be settled," an adviser to the provincial governor says. "We are at war - the political parties say they are not involved, but the mafias take shelter from the parties as they exploit the situation."

In Islamabad, enter any of the city's newsrooms, and see fear in the eyes of journalists who risk death and torture for going about assignments. Consider the words of their Karachi colleague Madiha Sattar - "a growth of intolerance has forged an extreme, murderous antipathy to freedom of expression."

Most shocking in this campaign of fear and intimidation against one of the pillars of democracy was the disappearance in late May of Syed Saleem Shahzad, an investigative reporter for the respected, Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online. Two days after his abduction, Shahzad's battered body was found at Mandi Bahauddin, 130 kilometres south-east of the capital. The reporter left detailed accounts of the threats he had received from the ISI; in Washington, senior officials unflinchingly confirming that Shahzad's death had been ''sanctioned'' by the Pakistani government.

Umar Cheema might just as easily have been their victim. Behind a door marked ''Investigation Cell'' off a basement corridor in the Islamabad offices of The News, the 34-year-old father of two explains that the shock in his colleague Saleem Shahzad's murder was a realisation it might just as easily have been him.

As Cheema drove home from a party in the early hours during Ramadan last year, 12 men who identified themselves as police commandos abducted him, he says. Informing him first that he was a suspect in a killing, they pulled a bag over his head and hauled him away.

"They took me to a building where the leader stripped off my clothes. Then I was ordered to lie on the floor and they beat me on the back and shoulders for 20 or 25 minutes with leather straps and wooden canes.

"I was writing about corruption in the government and the lack of accountability in the military and intelligence agencies - they said they were beating me because of my reporting. Then they shaved my head and eyebrows - that's what is done to thieves in rural areas to humiliate them.

"Shahzad's death left me speechless," he says. "I was the second last victim before they took him. So I felt very much that this was a message for me - it was very, very personal."

In Islamabad, the government of Prime Minister Yousaf Gillani is as overwhelmed as it is complicit in the nation's failings. The economy is in crisis and the government has ceded control of more than half the country to the military or to extremist militias. "None of the cogs of state mesh to make it do what must be done," Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's Kamran Arif said.

Just south of Islamabad is Rawalpindi, a more typical Asian city than the sanitised and empty boulevards of Islamabad. As home and headquarters to the men and institutions that comprise Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment, this is the centre of absolute power in Pakistan. And it is here that a deep-fried sense of humiliation over the American raid to kill Osama bin Laden, in May this year, is felt most acutely.

"After the bin Laden raid, it's a question of the survival of the state," the defence analyst and director of the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, Maria Sultan, says. "The problem now is that by this very public humiliation, the US has lost its biggest supporter - it's not the capability of the Pakistani military that is affected, it's its credibility."

A close reading of ''Getting Bin Laden'', The New Yorker's inside account of the May 2 raid, reveals the mission was not just a single US incursion that managed to evade Pakistan's air defences. On the night, there were effectively three separate American missions, none of which was detected by a military-security complex that demands indulgence by the people of Pakistan on the grounds that it is their only protection from the Indian hordes.

Pakistan's generals faced a grim choice - they had to admit to deceiving the world in harbouring bin Laden, or to incompetence by not knowing he was lounging in their backyard. So supine were they in opting to plead incompetence there were fears of a mutiny in the middle ranks of the security services.

The US signal to the world of just how much it could not trust its south Asian ally came hard on the heels of serial embarrassments at the hands of the Taliban and other militant groups in Pakistan.

There have been a series of militant attacks on the most secure and sensitive defence establishments. The latest, which some observers concluded could not have been undertaken without inside help, saw a 10-man assault team storm the Mehran naval aviation base in Karachi. It took hundreds of Pakistani navy commandos, marines and paramilitaries to retake the base, but not before two aircraft were destroyed, hostages taken and the base had been occupied for the best part of a day.

But it takes a discerning Pakistani general to differentiate between militants - some are ''strategic assets'' of the security apparatus and the generals refuse to go after them.

Dr Ayesha Agha, whose military and political commentaries appear in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, explains: "The military depends on these 'assets' - they are a cost-effective means to fighting wars that the Pakistani military wants to fight in India and Afghanistan." Extrajudicial killings by the military now are counted in the hundreds.

When men in uniform were filmed recently murdering a detainee, the reckoning in human rights circles was that far from being a lapse of judgment, the recording had been allowed in the knowledge that its distribution on the internet would serve as a useful warning to the wider community.

A Karachi taxi driver becomes excited as he ferries us from the airport to a downtown hotel - "Pakistan lovely country," he bellows. "Terrorism? No, no, no."

But a single graphic in a 200-page study of Pakistan, published in May by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, reveals an impossible security challenge. Last year alone, 2113 terrorist attacks, 369 clashes between the security services and militants, 260 operational attacks by the security forces, 135 US drone attacks, 69 border clashes, 233 bouts of ethno-political violence and 214 inter-tribal clashes resulted in more than 10,000 dead and as many injured.

The death of bin Laden and the reported death of al-Qaeda's new No. 2 figure, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, in an American drone attack last week, are still being factored into a running debate among intelligence specialists on the extent to which al-Qaeda offshoots elsewhere in the world, especially the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP], have taken the baton from the Pakistani organisation.

But a July study by the New America Foundation of 32 ''serious'' jihadist terror plots against the West from 2004 to 2011, finds 53 per cent had operational or training links to jihadist groups in Pakistan - compared to just 6 per cent being linked to Yemen. And the rising tempo of the drone attacks has failed to dent the rising frequency of Pakistan-linked plots against the West, the study finds.

Implicit or explicit in any discussion on Pakistan's volatile mix of militant violence and governmental chaos, is the level of anxiety around the world about the security of its nuclear arsenal. Confronted with claims such as that by bin Laden that acquiring a nuclear weapon was a ''religious duty'' and the hope expressed by one of his lieutenants that such a weapon one day might be seized in Pakistan, officials in Islamabad invariably boast that all is tightly locked down.

But when we ask a Pakistani diplomat how secure were the weapons in the aftermath of the US mission to kill Osama bin Laden, he replies: "Less so, now that the Americans have revealed to the world that it is possible to sneak into Pakistan undetected, to take something that you really want."

President Obama's public appeal that Pakistan not become the world's first ''nuclear-armed militant state'' gives context to disclosures by The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh of the existence of a US Special Operations rapid-response team which would be parachuted into Pakistan in the event of a nuclear crisis.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counter intelligence at the US Department of Energy, is boldest in setting out the fears of Washington, London and other capitals - some of which were disclosed without diplomatic varnish by Wikileaks last year.

Writing in Arms Control Today, Mowatt-Larssen, who served 20 years at the CIA, bills Pakistan as the most likely setting for terrorists bent on acquiring a nuclear device to co-opt a nuclear insider - of whom there are estimated to be as many as 70,000 in Pakistan.

"There is a lethal proximity between terrorists, extremists, and nuclear weapons insiders," he writes. "Insiders have facilitated terrorist attacks. Suicide bombings have occurred at air force bases that reportedly serve as nuclear weapons storage sites. It is difficult to ignore such trends.

''Purely in actuarial terms, there is a strong possibility that bad apples in the nuclear establishment are willing to co-operate with outsiders for personal gain or out of sympathy for their cause."

"Not possible," says Maria Sultan. "About eight to 10,000 personnel working at the strategic level on security," she says, ticking off seven or eight interlocking layers of complex security, the first of which she says would trip most intruders before they came within 80 kilometres of a nuclear facility. "The idea that a terrorist can walk in and get hold of a device is just not possible."

Such is the bind in which Pakistanis find themselves. But if it is true feeble and corrupt civilian administrations make circumstances ripe for a military takeover, it is hardly surprising the generals have no respect for democratic fundamentals.

As revealed in one of the Wikileaks cables, Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was ready to force President Asif Ali Zardari from office - save for the fact the general thought even less of Zardari's likely civilian replacement. And historically, Washington has opted to connect with Pakistan through the military power of the generals, rather than the people power of the civilian leadership.

Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA analyst, sets out the connections in Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad. "…Richard Nixon turned a blind eye to the murder of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis to keep his friends in Pakistan's army in power, a strategy that ultimately failed," Riedel writes. "Ronald Reagan entertained Zia-ul-Haq even as Zia was giving succour to the Arab jihadists who would become al-Qaeda. George W. Bush allowed Pervez Musharraf to give the Afghan Taliban a sanctuary from which to kill American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan."

And in the judgment of Bushra Gohar, an elected MP from Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley, Washington still prefers to deal with the military rather than the country's civilian leadership. "That's not a role that the military has under the constitution," she says during a break in the business of the National Assembly in Islamabad. "There has been a democratic transition in this country and we expect the international community to support it."

Power vacuums become ripe for exploitation, as was revealed with frightening clarity earlier this year when two of three elected figures who had dared to speak out against Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws were assassinated. In January, Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer was gunned down by one of his state-provided security men; in March, the Minorities Minister and the only Christian in Gillani's cabinet, Shahbaz Bhatti, died in a hail of gunfire as his car left his mother's home in Islamabad.

Taseer's killer confessed and became a national hero. His home is a shrine, he is garlanded with rose petals and, in the oddest twist of all, the young lawyers' movement that effectively bundled Pervez Musharraf, the last dictator, from power in 2008, has taken the side of this cold-blooded murderer - not the principle for which his victim died.

A visitor leaves Pakistan wondering if anyone here speaks the truth. The dictators habitually resort to amping up religious parties - either to drown out secular ones that might be interested in the ideals of selfless democracy, or to further marginalise the country's Shiia Muslim minority.

"And people like Musharraf have two faces," Kamran Arif of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said. "He would say all the right things for the West and do just what he wanted to do at home."

Some foreign analysts fall back on the seeming failure of Pakistan's religious parties at the ballot box as a hopeful sign. But a sense of rising radicalisation, particularly in the military and the middle classes, suggests an asymmetric contest for control of a highly unstable society - the non-religious parties fight in the parliament, but the religious parties are street brawlers.

Sherry Rehman, the only elected figure in the country to defend the convicted blasphemer Aasia Bibi, makes the same point in explaining how that debate was lost. "The discourse shifted from the parliament to the street," she says.

"We have to keep the agenda in the parliament, and not with the gun-toting thugs who make inflammatory speeches outside."

Like the financial institutions in the 2008 global financial crisis, Pakistan is deemed by Washington to be ''too big to fail''. Between them, however, Washington and Islamabad have been unable in the past decade to make this relationship work - credibly or creditably.

Predictions of imminent collapse in Islamabad are exaggerated, but perhaps not overly so. "The government does not have the capacity to tackle any of the issues," says the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's Arif. "Things will just keep getting bad … and I don't discount the fact that we can fall into chaos."

Like many other analysts, Bruce Riedel laboriously sets out the policy options by which Washington and Islamabad might work together to defeat the global jihadist movement - before he concludes that none is easy or guaranteed.

An adviser to several US administrations and now with the Brookings Institution, Riedel sees Pakistan under siege from a syndicate of radical terrorist groups unified by the notion that nuclear-armed Pakistan could be the extremist jihadist state they have never had.

"They want to hijack Pakistan and its weapons," he says. Alluding to Islamabad's role in creating a monster, as often as not with Washington's sponsorship, he writes: "An extremely powerful jihadist Frankenstein is now roaming the world, with equally powerful protectors in Pakistani society, right up to the very top.

"Who cannot fear that the 'long beards' will prevail?"

Headley was the first one to shed light on the involvement of the ISI-LeT joint venture in the creation of the IM

2011-09-24T06:18:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from Shishir Gupta’s book which traces the genesis of the terror group

Banglore Mirror July 18, 2011

While reams could be written on 26/11, our focus is on the intersection and overlap between LeT-ISI and the Indian Mujahideen.

The role of the Indian Mujahideen was peripheral, but it was in the investigation of the Mumbai attacks that one could trace out the birth and origins of this group and the Pakistani involvement behind its creation. Had it not been for the mistakes mentioned earlier, the Mumbai attacks would also have been blamed on the Shahbuddin Ghouri brigade of the Indian Mujahideen.

The terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks were all carrying fake identity cards of Arunodaya Degree and Post-Graduate College, Vedre Complex, Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad.

Kasab was Samir Dinesh Chaudhari from Bengaluru; Ismail Khan was Naresh Vilas Varma of Hyderabad, Imran Babar was Arjun Kumar of Hyderabad; Nasir Umar was Dinesh Kumar of Hyderabad; Hafiz Arshad was Raghubir Singh of Ahmedabad; Abdul Rehman was Arun Sharma of Navi Delhi and Fahadullah was Rohil Patil of Hyderabad. Not only this, a virulent e-mail from the so-called group Mujahideen Hyderabad Deccan was sent to all the prominent TV news channels and print media during the Mumbai terror attack.

Highlighting the plight of Muslims in India, the e-mail, written in chaste Hindi, said that the Mumbai attack was the revenge for the communal riots and the Babri Masjid demolition at the hands of Hindu zealots. If the Kuber had been sunk by the LeT terrorists, Ajmal Kasab not survived and arrested and there were no telephone intercepts, India would have found it extremely difficult to prove the Pakistani involvement.

Just as in the case of the 26/11 attacks, it was investigations at the American end that provided the big picture of Pakistani complicity in Islamist terror attacks against India. It also became evident that jihadist terrorist groups like the LeT and the JeM were part of the larger Pakistani strategy to contain and hurt India.

On 3 February 2010, former director of US National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair said before the US Senate Committee that the overall Pakistani strategy was to use militants as an important part of its strategic arsenal to counter India's military and economic advantages.

This view was reinforced by a secret cable sent in September 2009 by US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, which Wikileaks released in December 2010, stating that Islamabad would not abandon the LeT even if the US was to pump more aid into that country. If the LeT-ISI combine is the heart of this jihadist-terrorist nexus against India, the Indian Mujahideen group is another manifestation of the same with the controls in Pakistan.

The origin of the Indian Mujahideen and its true mentors was revealed only after David Coleman Headley, a Pakistan-born American national formerly known as Daood Syed Gilani, was arrested by the FBI on 3 October 2009.

It was Headley who identified the voices of Abu Al Qama, Sajid Majid alias Wasi Bhai and Abu Qahafa in the 26/11 control room in Karachi. The fourth person in the 26/11 control room who guided the ten gunmen is suspected to be an Indian with the nom de guerre of Jindal Bhai as identified by Ajmal Kasab.

While arrested terrorist Amjad Khaja identified the fourth voice in the control room as Syed Zabiuddin Ansari of Maharashtra others believe that it could be Mohammed Abdul Aziz alias Ashraf alias Gidda, a radical Islamist who had fought the jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya and now works with the ISI.

Both Zabiuddin Ansari and Gidda were members of SIMI in the 1990s. While India is still to get the voice samples of those Pakistanis accused in 26/11, the final word on the Indian in the The Indian Mujahideen 226 26/11 control room is still to be said as Headley could not identify the fourth voice.

The Indian intelligence agencies, and visa and immigration officials were caught napping; they were oblivious to the fact that Headley had visited India nine times between September 2006 and March 2009 in order to survey Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Jaipur and other places to help the LeT target them.

Headley was arrested by the FBI, which had been informed by MI-6 that he was in touch with Al Qaida operatives in Europe, at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport while en route to Pakistan as part of the global conspiracy to target and attack Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that had earned the ire of Muslims all over the world for publishing blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in September 2005.

Headley's two associates in the conspiracy (called the Mickey Mouse project) to attack the Danish newspaper personnel and facilities were two top-notch Pakistan-based terrorists: Syed Mohammed Abdur Rehman Hashmi alias Abdur Rehman Syed alias Pasha and Ilyas Kashmiri.

While Headley was the first one to shed light on the involvement of the ISI-LeT joint venture in the creation of the Indian Mujahideen, Saeed and Kashmiri were the front officers of Islamist jihad against India. HuJI veteran Kashmiri's involvement in jihad against India began in 1994 with Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Abdur Rehman Syed was the controller of the Karachi Project, so called by Headley. But before we go into Headley's revelations on the Karachi Project in detail, it is important to understand Ilyas Kashmiri, for he is the perfect example of the fact that there may be group loyalties or specified target areas of operation in jihad but the master, the ISI, remains the same.
Excerpted with permission from Hachette India. Price: 550

Indian Mujahideen

North India group

South India group

Atik and Sadiq collaborated on the instructions of Amir Raza and Riyaz Bhatkal to execute the 2008 Ahmedabad/ Surat serial blasts. Afzal Usmani was their ground soldier for the project.

India’s Tryst with Terror

2011-09-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

Sep 9, 2011
DailyBeast

Following the attacks in Delhi, Kanwal Sibal writes that there are many reasons why India suffers from terrorism—including its complicated relationship with Pakistan.

How should we interpret the latest terrorist attack in India?

Because it occurred when the Indian prime minister was in Bangladesh charting a new relationship with that country (which, until Sheikh Hasina came to power, had provided a safe haven for terrorists targeting India), the attack could be construed as a reminder that covering our flank does not lessen India’s vulnerability.

Or, it could be that the terrorists were expressing their anger at the Indian justice system that condemned to death Afzal Guru, the co-conspirator of the terrorist attack against the Indian Parliament in 2001. In their eyes perhaps, India’s constitutional justice had to submit to the vengeful dictates of Islamic justice.

Perhaps the terrorists’ idea is to periodically keep mauling the financial and political capitals of India—Mumbai and Delhi, respectively, to keep India off balance, inflame domestic tensions, deepen its domestic fault lines and distract its attention away from its global ambitions and toward the management of its domestic situation.

India’s rise may be welcomed by those distant from India’s shores as a counterweight to the threatening ascent of China, but some of India’s neighbors obsessed by parity with India would hardly be enthused by this prospect and, lacking state capacity to directly confront India, might want to use nonstate actors to flatten India’s rise as much as possible.

Terrorism in India was earlier an instrument of state policy of its western neighbor: Pakistan. Now that country itself is being bled by terrorism, which makes increasingly difficult its policy of fighting one set of terrorists for internal security reasons and supporting another for external security ones (especially as now the U.S. too, as a victim of Pakistan’s dichotomous policies on terrorism, is keeping a watchful eye on that country’s conduct).

Yet, the plague of terrorism has spread so widely in the region that India cannot insulate itself from it. If aggrieved terrorist groups want to settle scores with Islamic Pakistan, non-Islamic India cannot escape their rancor, particularly as Pakistan has nourished for decades feelings of hatred toward Hindu India. The nonstate actors earlier used by Pakistan against India for terror onslaughts have, with Pakistan losing some control, enough capacity to target India autonomously. Even if every terrorist attack against India cannot be laid at Pakistan’s door today, it needs recalling that it is Pakistan that opened wide the doors to terrorist acts against India in the first place.

India is peculiarly vulnerable to terrorism. Its borders are not secure. It has an open border with Nepal and a porous border with Bangladesh; terrorists can infiltrate these borders as well as the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir into India. Its coast is not adequately defended, as the Mumbai terrorist attack tragically demonstrated. Under scrutiny for its terrorist affiliations, Pakistan has been developing the shield of deniability by creating terrorist cells in India, so that when terrorist attacks occur they are attributed to local terrorists and not Pakistanis. This strategy has worked politically, as India now recognizes that there are indigenous Islamic terrorist groups operating in the country to seek redress for local grievances.

A man injured in Wednesday's blast in New Delhi, India, is brought to a local hospital. A bomb apparently hidden in a suitcase exploded near a gate leading to the High Court, killing nine people and wounding 45 others, officials said., Gurinder Osan / AP Photo

India has been trapped by its soft diplomacy toward Pakistan: a policy that recognized that both India and Pakistan were victims of terrorism, and that terrorists should not be allowed to disrupt the India-Pakistan dialogue. With this position India could no longer blame Pakistan directly for acts of terror, as that would entail derailing this policy. From being on the defensive, Pakistan now claims that instead of knee-jerk reactions against Pakistan, India should deal with its home-grown problem of terrorism. This, of course, obfuscates the reality of Pakistan’s policies and the integrated nature of the terrorist threat, which derives from a shared religion, world views, social mores, madrassah education, mosque-based politics, training, and financing.

Soft targets are plentiful.
India’s governance problem is reflected in its inadequate disposition to deal with terrorist threats even now—despite being perhaps the country most lacerated by terrorism over the years. Decision making is slow, acquisition processes are dilatory, and maintenance of the equipment bought is poor. The police forces are understaffed, insufficiently trained, and ill-equipped. The federal nature of the system obstructs a comprehensive overhaul of the policing system as law and order is the responsibility of the state governments. Besides, political interference in police functioning has damaged its professional caliber and capacity.

India’s public places are generally highly congested. The streets overflow with people and all kinds of vehicular traffic, parking is chaotic, posts for public service are always crowded—and so soft targets are plentiful.

On top of it, in a country wracked constantly by terrorism, there is no consensus on framing a tough antiterror law. Politics distorts the debate. For fear of alienating Muslim voters, tougher laws are resisted for fear that Muslims may feel targeted. More divisive feelings are generated by bringing to the fore “Hindu” terrorism as an equal problem.

The Delhi terror attack is a sad reminder that India’s tryst with terror will not end easily.

French expulsions row doing nothing to help the Roma

2011-09-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

20.09.10
EU Observer

By Valentina Pop

BRUSSELS - Despite a highly pubicised row between Paris and Brussels, Roma adults and children continue to be deported from France, with human rights champions voicing concern about the missed opportunity to actually do something for the minority.

"I note the new policies of France towards the Roma, including the dismantling of their settlements and collective deportations to their country of origin," Navi Pillay, the United Nation's human rights chief said on Sunday (19 September) in Geneva.

"This can only exacerbate the stigmatization of Roma and the extreme poverty in which they live. I urge European states, including France, to adopt policies enabling Roma people to overcome their marginalization."

So-called "voluntary" repatriations from France continued last week, even as President Nicolas Sarkozy prominently escalated his row with the European Commission during a summit of EU leaders, denouncing as an "insult" one EU commissioner's having comparison of his policy to that of the Nazi regime which exterminated hundreds of thousand of Roma during World War II.

His party colleagues continued to play hardball over the weekend, with one French senator saying he wished Luxembourg "didn't exist," in reference to the home country of EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding, who last week threatened to take France to court and said she thought Europe would never again witness such "apalling" and "disgraceful" policies after the world war.

A similar comparison to Ms Reding's was made by Europe's human rights champion Thomas Hammerberg, from the Council of Europe.

"Discrimination against Roma communities in Europe has a long and bitter history. The repression came to a climax in the 1930-40s when they were targeted by fascist regimes in both Romania and Italy. In areas controlled by the German Nazis several hundred thousand Roma were rounded up and brought to concentration camps or executed directly. This genocide was not even an issue at the Nuremberg trial and the little compensation to the survivors or to the victims' family members came late, if at all," he said in a statement last week.

"Anti-Gypsyism has continued until this day and is now exploited by extremist groups in several European countries."

The escalating row between Paris and Brussels has divided member states, with Mr Sarkozy finding support among Europe's anti-immigration hardliners: Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and Hungary's extreme-right Jobbik party.

"I am with Sarkozy," Mr Berlusconi repeated during the week-end, after having voiced similar support during the EU summit in Brussels.

Meanwhile, Roma camps continue to be dismantled in the proximity of Milan, with Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni pushing for EU rules allowing EU citizens to be sent back after three months if they do not have enough money to support themselves.

Ten Romanian policemen are due to arrive in France on Monday on a mission to help their French colleagues in their Roma repatriation policy.

Romania, home to nearly 2 million Roma, and Bulgaria, with around 800,000, have the biggest Roma populations in the EU.

Unlike Romanian and Bulgarian Roma, who can travel freely and come back to France after being deported, non-EU Roma from Kosovo face a tougher reality when deported from countries like Germany. Under a deal agreed in April between Berlin and Pristina, 14,000 refugees are to be returned to Kosovo - 10,000 of them Roma.

Roma children in Kosovo have a tougher future ahead than Romanian-born ones (Council of Europe)

In a bid to divert media attention from France, Mr Sarkozy last Thursday said that German chancellor Angela Merkel was also planning to clear Roma camps. Berlin later rejected the claim, saying its actions, which amount to repatriating some 2,500 Roma people a year, are not "mass deportations" but "gradual returns."

Arundhati’s mother to donate ‘cursed money’

2011-09-10T09:21:00.003-07:00

Mother of big case to donate hard-won inheritance

Landmark property rights order favouring Mary Roy executed after 24 years in Kerala
JOHN MARY

Mary Roy in Kottayam

Kottayam, Oct. 25: The spotlight on writer Arundhati Roy at a Delhi seminar on Thursday where she sat beside Kashmiri separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani perhaps overshadowed a more historic event involving her mother down south in Kerala.

Just a day earlier, the 76-year-old Mary Roy, who had fought and won a landmark legal case on women’s property rights in India 24 years ago, finally saw the Supreme Court order executed in her own case.

The mother of Booker Prize-winner Arundhati, however, told The Telegraph she would donate the hard-won family share to charity.

Going by the market rate in Kottayam town, her 0.09 acres may now fetch Rs 1.8 crore. But to Mary Roy, the land — which is near Aymenem, the location for Arundhati’s novel The God of Small Things — is “cursed” property because it caused bitterness among siblings.

“Let it go to charity. Arundhati and my elder son, Lalit, would not want to enjoy it,” she said. Arundhati too had donated almost her entire Booker Prize money to charities, with parts of it going towards the Bhopal gas victims’ welfare.

Mary Roy had walked out on her now-deceased Bengali husband — a Calcuttan who later moved to the Northeast — with her two young children after he turned an alcoholic. Her battle for family property began in 1965 when she was asked to leave her Ooty home by her brothers shortly after their father’s death. Arundhati was then three and Lalit just a little older.

The brothers’ action was rooted in two laws — the Travancore Christian Succession Act 1916 and Cochin Succession Act 1921 — which restricted a Keralite Syrian Christian daughter’s property rights to a fourth of the son’s share or Rs 5,000, whichever was less.

The young mother went to court and, after a 21-year battle, got the Supreme Court to strike down the two laws in 1986 in what has come to be known as the “Mary Roy case” in Indian legal history.

The verdict brought all Christians in the country under the Indian Succession Act which gives equal property rights to sons and daughters, enabling thousands of Keralite Christian women to regain their share of property denied to them.

Yet Mary Roy’s wait for her own tiny piece of land continued for nearly a quarter century longer. When she approached the Kottayam sub-court seeking implementation of the apex court order, her brothers raised objections.

The case got entangled in issues such as her mother’s right to one-third of the property without alienating it. Mary Roy should have got the land after her mother’s death in the year 2000. But one of her brothers, who had sold a part of his share for Rs 5 crore, sought to prevent the partition by dragging her to Kerala High Court.

After the high court cleared the legal hurdles before Mary Roy, the principal sub-judge here ordered execution of the verdict last Wednesday and sent court officials to carry it out.

Last week, Mary Roy travelled to the site of the disputed family property. She stood there, cheered by a motley crowd, taking possession of her nine cents (100 cents make an acre) after pulling down dilapidated sheds with the help of an earthmover. It was a moment the ailing educator and rights campaigner had thought would never come in her lifetime.

“I am relieved that my long struggle for justice has yielded result. My battle was not for a piece of property alone but to ensure that women in this country enjoy the rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” Mary Roy had told PTI last week.

The campaigner in her is not done yet. She has commissioned Delhi-based advocate Anand Grover to petition the Supreme Court to get local bodies to implement the environment ministry rule that asks every citizen to dispose of his garbage responsibly. The issue has become a problem in Kerala, with rubbish strewn everywhere and posing a health risk.

__________________________
Gulf times
Sunday,24 October, 2010,

By Ashraf Padanna/Kottayam, Kerala

The mother of Booker prize winner Arundhati Roy who won a five-decades-long fight for family property, says she does not want the ‘cursed money’ and will give it away in charity.

Mary Roy who won the case in the Supreme Court received possession of her share of land last week.

“My daughter (Arundhati) and son Lalit have told me they are not interested in it. Now the proceeds from the cursed property worth Rs18mn will go to charity,” Roy said. “We are glad that after nearly 50 years this saga of litigation has come to an end.”

Speaking to a group of reporters at her residence inside a 10-acre campus of the Pallikkodam School that she established on her own, Roy said she had given a power of attorney to her son to execute her decision.

“Neither me nor my elder sister Molly Joseph needs my father’s land. We have both been fighting for a principle - equality of women before the law,” she said. “Many other women got justice after the apex court verdict more than two decades back. I had to wait another 26 years.”

In 1965, Roy was told to get out of a cottage in Ootty which belonged to her father and where she lived with her small children Arundhati, 3, and Lalit, 5. At the time she was told that according to the Travancore Christian Succession Act (TCSA), “a daughter shall receive one-fourths the share of a son or Rs5,000 whichever is less.”

She was just back from Kolkatta after a failed marriage and struggling to take care of her children. She was able to retain the cottage, as the TCSA was not applicable in Tamil Nadu.

She then decided she would fight to get equal rights under the Indian Constitution and she would fight the humiliation heaped upon her and other women. A Public Interest Litigation was filed in the Supreme Court in 1984 and two years later the court passed the historic judgment.

All Indians are now governed by the Indian Succession Act which gives equal rights to sons and daughters.

After her father’s death her mother had right over all her husband’s property. She died in 2000 after which her brother George Isaac resorted to innumerable adjournments and appeals to the Kerala High Court to prevent the partition but to no avail.

The litigation came to an end last week when a civil court in Kottayam assigned the property to Roy.

Isaac sold the ancestral house and half the property for Rs50mn. The remaining half is divided between the two sisters and their late brother John’s wife who is a Canadian. “Today everyone should be happy. The land has now come into our possession with no further impediments,” Roy said.
____________
Christian Law of Succession in India

Lawisgreek

The Odyssey of Islamism in America

2011-09-10T09:21:00.002-07:00

Family Security Matters

October 26, 2010
Amil Imani

Islamism is a mutation of Islam and is rapidly advancing on two fronts. In every Islamic country, it is cowing the non-radicals while recruiting more and more radicals into its own ranks. In non-Muslim lands, flush with Petrodollars, Islamism is establishing itself as a formidable force by enlisting the disaffected and attracting the delusional liberals with its promises. For the faithful, there is the added incentive of Allah’s heaven and its irresistible attractions.

Wherever Islam goes, so goes its ethos. Throwing acid in the face of women who fail to don the hijab or just by going to school, flogging people for sporting non-Islamic haircuts, and stoning to death violators of sexual norms are only a few examples of a raft of daily barbaric acts of Islamists in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and many Islamic lands. Other forms of Islamic brutalities such as Honor Killing have already found their way to America, Germany and other European countries with the ever-burgeoning Muslim populations

Reading about these religiously mandated horrific acts and even seeing them on television or the Internet may momentarily repulse, but does not terribly concern many Americans. After all, those things are happening on the other side of the world, and those people deserve each other; we are safe in fortress America, so goes the thinking.

But “Fortress America” is a delusion that even the events of 9/11 seem to have failed to dispel. Many prefer to believe that the assault of 9/11 was an aberration, since nothing like it has happened again, and it is unlikely that anything of the sort will ever happen again, so goes the wishful thinking. The reality portrays a vastly different picture. America is far from a fortress given its vast wide-open borders. It is a nation of laws where all forms of freedom are enshrined in its constitution; it’s where Americans live by humane ethos diametrically different from those of Islamist savagery. Sadly, these differences confer great advantage to the Islamists and place America in imminent danger.

The breach of “Fortress America” from the air on 9/11 is only the first installment of many more forthcoming heinous assaults, unless we abandon our complacency, stop relying on the invincibility of the law-enforcement people and willingly make the sacrifices that would protect our way of life.

Knowing Islam intimately and having experienced its systemic savagery, has compelled me to warn repeatedly of the deadly imminent threat it poses to all non-Muslims (Why Confront Islamism) attempting to present a comprehensive treatment of the evil precepts and practices of Islamism. I am listing a few facts that should be enough to alarm anyone who cherishes liberty and freedom and awaken anyone who is comforted by the belief that all the Islamic mayhem is limited to an illiterate gang of primitive Middle Easterners and has no implications for America. Sorry, bad news is here already.

* Some 26 percent of American Muslims, ages18-29, support suicide bombings "in defense of Islam," according to findings of a recent Pew poll.
* According to Pew, there are 2.35 million Muslims in America, 30 percent of whom are in the 18-29 age range. Some claim that the number of Muslims is in fact much larger. Even using the conservative Pew numbers, over 180,000 Muslims in America are bomb-approving. This is an alarmingly large number, given that Muslims, as an article of faith, practice dissimulation in dealing with infidels and under-report their true intentions. How many human bombs and bomb-approving people does it take to wreak havoc on our country?
* The 180,000 Muslims living among us don’t define what “defense of Islam” is. It could be anything that they feel constitutes an attack on Islam and Islamic values, such as the reported flushing of the Quran down the toilet, the Danish Cartoons, Rushdie’s book, a newspaper article, an Internet posting, or even women not donning the hijab.

When religious fanatics unreservedly advocate wanton acts of mass murder, they are not likely to shy from coercion and intimidation measures to impose their will on the larger society. In tandem with the cold murder of Van Gough in Holland, for instance, Islamists had been striving to supplant civil laws with the Islamic Sharia in the country. In other lands such as France, England and Canada, Muslims have also been waging serious campaigns for adoption of the Sharia or some of its provisions, just for starters.
In 2001, ISNA published a brochure that is sent to public school teachers and administrators. "You’ve Got a Muslim Child in Your School" spells out some of the basics of Islam and specifies some of the restrictions. One section reads:
“On behalf of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest organization of Muslims in the United States and Canada, we would like to request that in view of the above teachings of Islam, Muslim students in your school system should not be required to:

1) Sit next to the opposite sex in the same classroom;

2) Participate in physical education, swimming or dancing classes. Alternative meaningful education activities should be arranged for them. We urge you to organize physical education and swimming classes separately for boys and girls in accordance with the following guidelines:

• Separate classes for boys and girls in a fully covered area
• Only male/female instructors for the respective group
• Special swimming suits that cover all the private parts of the body down to the knee
• Separate and covered shower facilities for each student

3) Participate in plays, proms, social parties, picnics, dating, etc. which require free mixing of the two sexes;

4) Participate in any event or activity related to Christmas, Easter, Halloween or Valentine’s Day. All such occasions have religious and social connotations contrary to Islamic faith and teachings. We also urge you to ensure that the following facilities are available to Muslim students in your school:

5) They are excused from their classes to attend off-campus special prayers on Fridays (approximately 1:00 to 2:00 P.M.).

6) They are excused for 15 minutes in the afternoon to offer a special prayer in a designated area on the campus. The prayer is mandatory for all Muslims and often cannot be offered after the school hours.

7) All food items containing meat of a pig in any form or shape, as well as alcohol, should be clearly labeled in the cafeteria.

8) At least one properly covered toilet should be available in each men’s and women’s room.

9) Muslim students are excused, without penalty of absence, for the two most important festivals of Islam: Eid Al-Fitr and Edi Al-Adha, in accordance with the lunar calendar.”

Ever since 9/11, and possibly before, America has been concerned about terrorists coming from Islamic lands. For this reason, some people advocated profiling as a safeguard against the 9/11 type mass murderers. But how do you profile hundreds of thousands of Muslim Americans who are already here and look and act like other Americans? How can an open free society such as ours safeguard the individual freedom we so greatly value and protect the safety of its citizens?

The immensely difficult task of safeguarding our freedom while ensuring our safety is seriously and repeatedly undermined by Islamist apologists, pontificating academes, vote-hungry politicians, and the mainstream media, each for their own reasons. Here are some of the comfort pills dispensed by the mainstream media’s polls: “Most Muslims seek to adopt American lifestyle" (U.S. Today); "Muslims assimilate better in U.S. than Europe, poll finds" (New York Times); Poll: “US Muslims Feel Post-9/11 Backlash Despite Moderate Outlook" (Voice of America).

It is said that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The mainstream media’s manipulation of statistics goes beyond selective reporting and qualifies as outright disinformation. Is the U.S. Muslims’ outlook moderate? All U.S. Muslims? What about the self-reported outlook of hundreds of thousands who support mass murder in the “defense of Islam?”

Even if most Muslims seek to adopt an American lifestyle, a great many Muslims are dead set on using violence to make America conform to their barbaric way of life. Islamism is cancer. Cancer cells are always few at the beginning and if they are left unchecked, they keep on multiplying, eventually devouring the non-cancerous.

Why all the fuss about “mild Islamism”? After all, mild Islamism is not all that bad and they are coming to power through free elections, the leftists keep preaching. In reality, even coining the term, “mild Islamism” is a clear instance of the leftists’ treachery. Being mildly Islamist is as plausible as being mildly pregnant. There is no such a thing as mild Islamism. It only starts mildly, just the way Muhammad himself started it in Mecca. Then, it builds momentum and settles for nothing less than the total imposition of its dogma and will. Being mildly Islamist is only the head of the camel poking into the tent. Wherever the head of the animal goes, if it is not chopped off, the body eventually follows. And the body of Islam is a disease-bearing body that will infect the healthy secular societies.

As is the case with cancer cells, it is the malignant minority that is death-bearing.

In the Germany of the 1930s, for instance, very few people were Nazis and most Germans dismissed them as a bunch of hotheaded fools. Before long, the hotheaded few cowed the dismissive masses and as a result, millions lost their lives.

Escalations of demands, intolerance of differences, and contempt for the non-Muslims are hallmarks of Islam. The deluded liberals as well as the publishers of the leftists are destined to be among the very first victims of mild Islamism as it gathers power.

Mild Islamism may indeed be a minority in America. Yet, this deadly cancer has metastasized throughout all fifty-states and is attempting to devour Michigan with Dearborn as its capital. Urgent confrontation of this advancing disease is imperative to stave it off. We must resist the intrusion of this seventh-century mentality into our country and our way of life. We must do all we can to protect our precious freedom. Here is the question: Do we, in America and the West, have the sense and the will to forestall mild Islamism from evolving into a real Islamism?

Just a sobering note, mild Islamism is already here in our country, the Muslim cab driver of the Minneapolis Airport refusal to ferry passengers with alcohol or even those with seeing-eye dogs. Muslim inmates demand to be served only halal Food. Campbell's Soup catering to Islam; Muslim students badger universities for special facilities for their meetings; and, the first ever Muslim Congressmen’s assumption of office by swearing on the Quran and not the Bible. More NJ school district recognizes Muslim holidays and much more.

Along with Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran funded mosques, there are other infrastructures supporting sharia law:

Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America
Sharia Academy of America
Sharia Board of America
Islamic Supreme Council of America
Islamic American University

Government agencies at the city/state level have started abiding by sharia law:

Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development Department

“The Alternative Financing program provides small Minneapolis businesses (neighborhood retail, service or light manufacturing) an alternative financing to the interest-based system that is in accordance with Islamic law, or Sharia.”

“At the federal level, taxpayer dollars to bailout sharia-promoting AIG.”

Further, the University of Wisconsin Law School published research that stated:

“American judges have been judging Muslim divorces in state courts for years, creating a body of case law that…involves Islamic family law doctrines…”

“And courts in Texas have referred cases to Texas Islamic Court are just a few examples for the lemmingswho are coming out in force to support Islamic sharia law.”

“Islamism has grown spectacularly since 1989, becoming the most powerful form of radical utopianism, forming an alliance with the left, dominating civil societies, challenging many governments and taking over others, establishing a beachhead in the West, and smartly advancing its agenda in international institutions,” says Dr. Daniel Pipes.

Well, mild Islamism is not all that obtrusive, since it is similar to the early stages of cancer. Yet, cancer it is. And before long, the full-blown cancer will develop. If we do not want to deal with that beast, we need to take drastic measures to eradicate the disease no matter how unpleasant and unpopular they may be.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and a pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com. Amil Imani is the author of the smashing book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad.

Keep Your Charity, We Want Justice

2011-09-10T09:21:00.001-07:00

Keep Your Charity, We Want Justice: International Aid and the Role of “Humanitarian” Assistance
Posted: January 3rd, 1994
MediaMouse

Reprinted from The FUNdamentalist (March 1994)

In November, the Grand Rapids Press ran an article entitled “`Time for Healing,’ North Says of Americans’ Role in Vietnam.” Speaking at the Amway Grand Plaza, North promoted his newest mission and his newest book. The article state that “North contends it is time to lower barriers and build bridges in that battered nation of Indochina where 58,000 Americans were killed and a half million others wounded.” Wait a minute. It seems that the article conveniently failed to include the several million Southeast Asians who were killed and wounded during the USA war, as well as the incredible eco-cide that was wrought by USA bombers (the word eco-cide was coined during the USA war in Southeast Asia to describe the incredible ecological destruction done).

North’s newest book, “One More Mission,” published by Zondervan, is his latest attempt at justifying the intentionality of the USA military in the war in Southeast Asia. In fact, half the book is devoted to North’s feeble attempt to articulate USA foreign policy as well as taking occasional opportunities to plead innocent in the Iran/Contra scandal. The latter half of the book does deal with his return to Vietnam, but solely for the purpose of denouncing Communism, praising the “persecuted” Christian community, and defending the need for more free (for some) enterprising in the country. The book jacket has other endorsements from mental giants like Cal Thomas and Rush Limbaugh. The end of the book includes a message, “How Can You Help?” These two pages are a pitch for International Aid, a “humanitarian” group that facilitated some of North’s trip to Vietnam.

International Aid (IA) located in Spring Lake, Michigan, was an outgrowth of an old World Vision project that used the warehouse that IA now occupies. In September of 1980g, IA officially became a separate entity. IA literature states that they have 5 main program areas; Development, Medical, Emergency Relief, Domestic, and Mission assistance. This means providing food, clothing, medical supplies, training, educational material, and personal care items for missionaries abroad. IA’s 1992g Annual Report states that “The US efforts complement IA’s global work. We have partnered with many US agencies and provided supplies that give hope to needy families, encouraging them to regain self-worth.” Having researched the relationship between USA agencies and Private Volunteer Organizations (PVOs), I was immediately curious about the connections that IA has. The fact that they endorsed a book by Ollie North is enough to make any sane person think twice, but I decided to investigate further.

According to Deb Preusch and Tom Barry’s book, The Soft War: The Uses and Abuses of US Economic Aid in Central America, “The phenomenon of private groups aiding counterinsurgency and counterrevolutionary campaigns supported by the US government is not a new one. Many of the leading figures and organizations involved in Central America played a similar role during the Vietnam War. Groups active in Central America like World Medical Relief, Air Commandos Association, and Project Hope were also active in Southeast Asia (pg. 89).” IA is currently involved in places like Bosnia, Somalia, and some Eastern European countries. IN order to understand their role in these places, it seems necessary to critique their past involvement in other countries. I will use Central America as a focal point.

IA states that they often provide “humanitarian assistance” to other USA PVOs working overseas. A report done by the Resource Center, base in New Mexico, says that “IA is primarily a warehousing and transportation operation, providing services to rightwing evangelical groups and occasional paramilitary groups.” The IA brochure entitled “Those we serve” lists literally hundreds of groups that do overseas work. It is impossible to investigate all of them, so I will choose to focus on two main groups and some brief information on connections to other groups.

World Vision

Started in the 1950s by Bob Pierce, World Vision has become the largest evangelical relief and development agency. Their 1987g budget was “over $145 million, with more than 20% coming from the US Agency for International Development (AID).” (Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right). IN 1982g the National Catholic Reporter investigated allegations that World Vision sometimes makes its fundraising objectives a higher priority than the needs of hungry people. Apparently World Vision aired a television documentary entitled “Crisis in the Horn of Africa” which, according to relief workers in Somalia, was “almost fraudulent” because World Vision was continuing fundraising appeals for emergency food aid months after Somalia’s food crisis had been alleviated.

In a 1979g issue of Christian Century, World Vision was charged with “having collected field data for the CIA in Vietnam.” This is quite possible since World Vision played a major role in the administration of refugee camps in the area.

Beginning in 1981g, World Vision was involved in an administrative role with the Salvadoran refugee camps in Honduras. Two of the other refugee agenciesCDEN and Caritasobjected to incursions by the Honduran army into the camps, but World Vision has remained silent about repeated human rights violations. Refugees testified that World Vision staff provided the army with regular intelligence reports and obligated them to attend evangelical services. Elements of World Vision collaborated with the most conservative faction of CEDEN to install conservative leadership of the pre-1982g CEDEN. So distrusted was World Vision that 19 Honduran organizations called on the government to throw the organization out of the country.

Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT)

Started in 1917g, the Wycliffe Bible Translators (also know as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) was formed for the purpose of translating the Christian bible into indigenous languages. Over the years, WBT’s close working relationship with USA government officials and allied foreign leaders has the missionaries a reputation as “assets” of the CIA. This is the case with their work in the Philippines in the 1950g’s and Vietnam in the 1960g’s. WBT was given grant money from US AID to train rural villagers to read and write. To practice their reading skills the CIA gave the new literates booklets on how to use M-16 rifles and blow up bridges.

In 1978g, WBT prepared a dictionary for the Tzotzil people of Mayan Indian ancestry. “Anthropologists noted that WBT’s Tzotzil/Spanish dictionary eliminated the Spanish and indigenous words for ideological concepts that threaten the status quo; class, community, conquer, exploitation, oppression, repression, revolution, revolutionary, rebellion, most of which do exist in the native language (Diamond).” This kind of ideological manipulation and cultural interference has led many Latin Americans to call for the expulsion of WBT from their countries. In 1979g, a commission from Mexico’s College of Ethnology and Social Anthropology had presented the government with a reported that concluded that WBT is “a covert political and ideological institution used by the US government as an instrument of control, regulation, penetration, espionage, and repression. The WBT supports the expansion of capitalism in areas rich in nature resources, opening these areas to the capital markets and turning the population into a docile and cheap labor force (Diamond).” The area that the Mexican committee speaks of is Chiapas, the site of the present uprising of Mexican Campesinos/as known as Zapatistas.

In Guatemala, during the Rios Montt regime, WBT re-entered the Ixil Triangle. While their work involved bible translation into indigenous languages, they also served to propagate a vigorously anti-communist ideology. According to WBT’s Helen Elliot “Rios Montt heard that we knew the language and helicoptered us into Nebaj, and then we started distributing blankets, food, and tin roofing as well as setting up schools.” She said WBT served as “a bridge between the military and the people” (Preusch & Barry). In 1986g, WBT signed a contract with AID for its Integrated Rural Development Program for the Mayan People. Among other things, the project translated government and military documents into Indigenous languages. It is well-known and documented that these “model villages,” established under Rios Montt’s regime, were nothing short of concentration camps. Montt had the support of many evangelical groups, like WBT, to implement his genocidal policies. A member of Montt’s own church, El Verbo, says this of the Indigenous, “The Army doesn’t massacre the Indians. It massacres demons, and the Indians are demon possessed; they are communists” (Diamond).

Other Connections

According to the Resource Center study, International Aid provided supplies to Operation Blessing, a project of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Operation Blessing is said to have a close relationship with the Navy’s Operation Handclasp, a project designed to enhance the image of the Navy. CBN also was notorious for supporting the Nicaraguan terrorist forces known as the Contras throughout the 1980g’s.

Another Michigan based organization that works with International Aid is World Medical Relief (WMR), based in Detroit. WMR was a CIA conduit in its secret war against Laos. The key player in this connection was Harry Aderhodt, a retired Air Force officer, who was head of the Air Commando Association. The Air Commandos have been known to supply weapons to the Contras and the Salvadoran military. The Resource Center’s report quotes an Air Commando newsletter in regards to International Aid, “they have been responsive to our every request.” It should be mentioned that Harry Aderhodt is the editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

Marantha Campus Ministries This organization has worked heavily in Guatemala and El Salvador. During the 1980g’s they organized 70 pro-Contra demonstrations on USA campuses before a key Congressional vote.

Gospel Crusade Between 1985g and 1987g this group transported over 100 tons of “humanitarian” supplies to the Contras. Gospel Crusade worked closely with FDN military leader Enrique Bermudez, a top ranking Somocista National Guardsman, who has been implicated as a conspirator in the 1980g assassination of El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero.

End Time Handmaidens This organization worked with the mercenary group RENAMO in Mozambique.

Church of the Rock Based in Texas, this group works with Paralife Ministries. Paralife has been known to provide ideological training to Salvadoran soldiers, encouraging them to massacre their own people. On one mission, Paralife evangelist John Stern toured eight military bases and spoke to over 3,700 soldiers. He told them that “killing for the joy of it was wrong, but killing because it was necessary to fight against an anti-Christ system, communism, was not only right but a duty of every Christian” (Diamond).

In early January I went to International Aid’s office in Spring Lake to talk with them about their activities and connections. I spoke with Dr. Jack Henderson who has traveled extensively with International Aid and is part of their executive staff. I told him that I had noticed a billboard they were running in Grand Rapids for aid to Bosnia. At that point International Aid had sent 21 containers of supplies to the war-torn former Yugoslavia. When I asked him about endorsing North’s book and his recent trip to Vietnam, he replied, “North is one of the most compassionate men I’ve ever met.” He also said that he had no problem endorsing a man involved in the illegal activities that led to the Iran/Contra scandal.

I asked Dr. Henderson about some of the allegations made from the Resource Center study of their organization. He told me that they did work with Air Commando “just once, but not anymore.” He also stated that the other allegations were “not accurate” as far as the other agencies mentioned earlier are concerned. I asked him if International Aid had any particular political position and he said “no, we have no particular political bent.” When asked about accountability to the groups they gave supplies to, I got no answer. It should be noted that the resource Center study also has a quote from the Christian reformed Church, “We believe that support of the contras is immoral, and are deeply disturbed by reports that International Aid, soliciting donations as an interdenominational relief and mission service organization,’ serves groups terrorizing civilians and our own CRC relief projects in Nicaragua.”

International Aid also has quite a list of corporate donors. Among them are Meijers, Spartan Stores, Baker Book House, Eli Lilly & Co., K-Mart, Dow Corning Corp., Gerbers, and Amway. In fact, Amway is the largest donor. Apparently Amway provides a lot of cleaning and personal care items to International Aid in support of missionaries overseas. Amway’s connections go a little deeper, however. The vice president of communications for Amway is Nan Van Andel, the daughter of Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel. Recently, Nan was given the position of Chairman (sic) of the Board for International Aid.

The title for International Aid’s 1992g Annual Report is “enabling those who serve.” The question should be asked, who is International Aid enabling and what are they serving? Is their real goal to provide relief, training, and development assistance, or are they cooperating with USA counterinsurgency campaigns and pacification programs which subvert democracy and make people dependent? From all the research I have done, the latter seems to be the case. But don’t take my word for it, investigate for yourself.