Activists in Dhaka, Bangladesh protest against rape. Photograph: Rehman Asad/ Rehman Asad/Demotix/Corbis

Protests following the brutal rape and murder of a young Indian woman have spread to beyond India to other countries in the region, including Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Had this incident occurred in Muslim-majority Pakistan, it would have no doubt gone viral in the looniverse, where it would have been presented as evidence of Muslim depravity and an indictment of Islam. Since it happened in secular, Hindu-majority India, it can’t be used to vilify Muslims, and therefore is barely worth mentioning. Professional hatemongers masquerading as human rights activists save their crocodile tears for women whose misfortune can serve as props in their crusade against Islam.

Geller and her ilk rail against “Islamic Supremacists” (read: “all Muslims”), but have no interest in discussing Western Supremacists, who, along with their fawning “native informants,” have predictably seized the opportunity to trot out some well-worn orientalist tropes.

Orientalist Feminism Rears its Head in India

by Amith Gupta, Jadaliyya

The brutal rape and murder of a young medical student in Delhi by a gang of young men, followed closely by the suicide of a Delhi rape victim who was pressured into marrying her rapist by police, has provoked international criticism of the Indian government and widespread protests across India by a diverse strata of Indian society. In the melee of protests with the government, the Indian state has used tear gas and live ammunition, killing a reporter. Next to the police’s horrible management of rape cases, as well as the protests themselves, Indian leaders have produced a litany of insensitive remarks about the case. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked, “Theek Hai?” [Is that enough?]), after giving a short and characteristically emotionless statement of concern about the rape. Many interpreted this comment as belittling of the widespread anger in India over the rape. His comment was followed by a statement by Abhijit Mukherjee, the son of President Pranab Mukherjee, dismissing the protesters as fake, or “dented and painted” (like a used car).

In contrast to the government’s abhorrent response to rape, the Indian public has been widely critical. Protests in solidarity with women and demanding justice for victims of sexual violence have erupted up all over India, from Delhi, where the horrible crimes were committed, to Kashmir. The upsurge of Indian anger has poured into the streets. Videos have not captured silence, but a swell of angry men, women, and youths willing to fight with police over  women’s right to safety in public and the right to demonstrate itself.

But you would not know it from some commentators, both Indian and “Western.” Instead, they have reduced India’s rape crisis to a cultural problem. Men, we are told–specifically, Indian men–are culturally lacking and barbaric. They have no concept of women’s rights or equality. They are born and bred to sexually assault and degrade women. This is a familiar phenomenon, and an outgrowth of colonialism. When horrible crimes happen, specifically to women, we reduce the culture, in this case, of about one billion people, to a gang-bang-enabling society of rapists. And of course, by blaming Indian culture specifically, Western sexism is brushed under the table. We arrive at Gayatri Spivak’s formula explaining the colonial exploitation of anti-woman violence in colonized societies: “white men saving brown women from brown men.” 

The process of reducing brown men to savages has been all too familiar in recent years. We have seen Egyptian men reduced to “animals” and “beasts” by the New York Post because a mob high on a combination of stupidity and jubilation about Mubarak’s downfall brutally assaulted white reporter Lara Logan. We have seen a number of “native informants,” from Mona Eltahawaly to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, tell us that Arab and Muslim men “hate” women. In typical colonial fashion, gender dynamics, including real crimes and acts of brutality, are reduced to “cultural” problems in which we can reduce entire societies to large gang-bang parties predicated on savage men who simply prey on women.

“Native informants”–people who can give us the illusion of authenticity in promoting these narratives by identifying as nationals from the countries and societies in question, such as Mona Eltahawy and Ayaan Hirsi Ali–are key to this narrative. As Oxford doctoral candidate and Rhodes scholar Monica L. Marks notes:

Books by these “native voices”–including Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Irshad Mandji’s Faith Without Fear–have flown off the shelves in post-9/11 America despite being roundly rebuffed by leading feminist academics such as Columbia University’s Lila Abu-Lughod and Yale’s Leila Ahmed.

Indeed, many of their first-hand accounts are “largely inaccurate and guilty of extreme generalizations,” but sell because “tell us what we in the West already know–that there’s something inherently misogynistic about Muslims and Arabs.” One cannot, of course, deny the existence of discrimination and crimes like the assault of Lara Logan. However, to assume that Muslim or Arab “culture” is intrinsically responsible–as opposed to context, and political and social factors such as an unequal distribution of power between men and women–is reductionist and narrow-minded.

In the aftermath of the rape scandals taking place in Delhi, we see the same orgy of racism and orientalism in blaming Indian culture, both by Western voices and Indian “native informants.” The angry and widespread demands of Indians, men and women alike, that the police make drastic reforms to protect women in public and to strictly punish–and even execute–rapists, do not seem to challenge these reductionist views when applied to India. Instead, commentators like Rashmee Roshan Lall provocatively suggest that “India has a woman problem,” writing inForeign Policy. While Lall’s account is certainly more nuanced and informative than any of those by Hirsi Ali or Mona Eltahawy, the piece nonetheless exhibits the same orientalist reductionism of blaming “India” as a culture or nation for these despicable crimes.

For one, which “India” is Lall blaming? Does it include the India of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, which has actively fought sexism from the local to national levels for over thirty years and claims millions of members? Does it include the “India” of the protesters, who are actively fighting and risking death from Kashmir to Delhi to challenge the police and demand justice? Does it include the “India” of the victim herself? Does it include the “India” of all of those who are disgusted by this horrible crime? Because that “India” does not seem to have a “woman” problem–it seems to have a “government” problem.

But Lall’s piece goes further. She gives us a series of statistics that indicate quite clearly how serious the rape and sexual assault problem in India is. One would have to be crazy to deny there are obvious problems that demand serious solutions as per the statistics Lall provides–solutions like the ones that the protesters are demanding, including stricter penalties for rapists. But nonetheless, the raw numbers are arranged together in a strange medley in order to castigate India in its entirety. I am not one to apologize for the Indian state or its variety of national problems. Indeed, the inability, incompetence, and active complicity of the Indian state in the rape crisis is yet another reason why India should not be held up as a democratic utopia. But in her account, Lall combines India’s rural child marriage problem, the increasing tolerance of premarital sex among Indians, sexually explicit advertising and porn, and patriarchal and sexist attitudes from men about violence against women in India to conclude that India as a whole has a “woman problem.” In addition, she quotes an analytical study that claims that India is the “worst country to be a woman” out of twenty of the largest economies in the world, predictably being far below the United States. She (rightfully) points out that Indians should not point to India’s election of female politicians or the presence of women in the workplace as an excuse for patriarchy.

Of course, this is a distorted narrative. For one, the problems Lall describes are not “Indian” ones. In the aftermath of the highly publicized celebrity beating of Rihanna, about half of Boston’s teenagers decided that the pop star, who was assaulted by her then-boyfriend, “deserved” to be beaten.

Likewise, premarital sex in the United States is common, and the United States also has a history of sexual repression. And although child marriage is not a regular phenomenon in the United States, and the USA is far ahead of India in the ranking of women’s rights according to the study quoted, the study is misleading. It groups India, an incredibly impoverished country that happens to have a large economy, with some of the wealthiest and most highly developed countries in the world. If anything, the survey is evidence of how GDP does not translate into a higher quality of life–certainly, not for women. But this is a problem of development–not a “woman problem” that is limited to India.

Likewise, depending on where we look in the United States – the military, college campuses, and different parts of the country – we can see rape culture and the blatant degradation of women. Rape statistics in the US military are particularly gruesome, showing that a female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than to be killed in battle. In general, one in five  American women report being sexually assaulted. Although Lall certainly did not mean to downplay sexual violence in other parts of the world, the danger of reducing incidents of sexual violence to a national or cultural problem is that it inevitably distracts us from sexual violence in other contexts.

Nonetheless, Lall is a serious commentator, and although her piece is problematic for sewing together various crimes against women in India into a “national” problem, it is still informative about various threats of sexual violence in India. But other accounts are far worse. Indian actress Leeza Mangaldas claims:

Should men not feel responsible then to prevent the occurrence of this crime? Shouldn’t men be disturbed that their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters constantly feel unsafe or feel they have to dress and behave in a particular way to avoid getting raped? Isn’t it time men educated other men about consent?

Somehow, Mangaldas’ technically accurate comment “rapists are men” has silently shifted to “Indian men are rapists.” Mangaldas does not stop at castigating men, but also claims her own unwillingness to address a difficult subject like rape in a film is on par with the “dented and painted” dismissal by Mukherjee (above), and a symptom of India’s cultural acceptance of rape. She also points to a Hindi phrase describing rape as a dishonor as more proof for her overall claim: that “We [Indians] are all guilty” of misogyny.”

But that is not the worst of it. In seeing how orientalist feminism works, it is sometimes helpful to see what people write from a point of anonymity.

On aggregate sites like Reddit, the so-called “front page of the Internet,” commentators “upvote” and “downvote” news stories and comments that they agree with. A quick survey of some of the anonymous comments–and the rest of the online community’s approval–reveals how deep some of these prejudices go. A self-labeled native informant, with the user name “IndianWoman_”–of course, removing any doubt that the user is actually an Indian woman–writes:

I am from India [the entire country, apparently] and I cannot even begin to count the number of times when I was groped, was subject to frotteurism, catcalls, lewd looks, and vulgar sexual taunts in public places – trains, buses, crowds, in a university library. I guess I was lucky I got away with only these. Fuck all those people.

1,745 net “upvotes.” She continues, “saying India is full of rapists and molesters is not a stereotype or generalization,” with three net upvotes, “Fuck India and Indians. And I am Indian,” with thirteen net upvotes, and to top it all off, to whitewash “the West,” she tells us, “I can seriously say that the United States has provided me with a much better living environment and I feel much safer and more at home here,” with nine net upvotes.

Not to be outdone, another supposed native informant, “sceptic_ali,” tells the community:

i [sic] strongly feel that we, south asian [pakistan, from what my cousins have told me, is no different] men, of all religions and sects, are a weak, insecure,treacherous and cowardly lot who, in most cases, are “brave” only when fighting the weak…how else can one explain a handful of english men ruling over half a billion indians with ease for two centuries. [boldface added]

Sceptic_ali explicitly relates Indian cultural “weakness” to colonialism. He continues, “…i would be remiss in not pointing out that north indians and pakistani men are particularly misogynous; rest are only relatively better, only relatively…oh, and, after the arabs, we are among the most racist people on the planet. and here, too, north indians and pakistanis take the lead”.

Overall, the post receives an astonishing fifty-six net upvotes.

The commentary is not limited to “native informants.” User “Czeris” writes, “I confess to being a western male. I cannot conceive of how Indian men can not be the first ones on the picket line, front and shoulder with their women. Do you not see how this reflects on you?” with twenty-two net upvotes. The user, like Mangaldas, strangely ignores the massive presence of men in the protest. Likewise, “DwarfJesus” writes “Oh the culture is definitely to blame. Have you even seen the amount of rape cases in India?…This is not america…Rape is not as frowned upon in India as it is in the western culture,” receiving six net upvotes. The user continues, asking why nobody on the bus helped the woman (despite that it was a private charter bus and nobody else was present), and points out the police complicity in many of the rape incidents, something the user believed could not happen in America.

The running theme, both with native informants and ignorant Westerners, is that there is something inherently backward about Indian culture. Some users explicitly use colonial justifications to argue their worldview. Others explicitly contrast the United States, sometimes in ways that are false–such as by suggesting rape is not “as frowned upon” in the USA, or that police involvement in rape does not take place, both claims that are difficult to measure and/or outright false. Indeed, even Lall is guilty of these strange contradictions–she herself notes, for example, that US representative Todd Akin made some terrible comments suggesting pregnant women cannot truly be raped.

Overall, would we ever use the combination of rape-enabling comments by Todd Akin, the widespread reporting of sexual assault in the United States, the epidemic levels of rape in the US military, the rate of rapes and apologism for rape on US college campuses, the difficulties in properly prosecuting sexual assault in the United States, instances of mob violence against women, or instances of complete failures of the law to prosecute obvious gang rape in the United States, to reduce rape and violence against women to a part of American culture? Would such an explanation be helpful or meaningful in solving the issue of violence against women? Would it point out where reforms need to be made? Or would it simply be a vitriolic and intolerant justification for cultural hatred? The difference, is of course, quite obvious–when sexual violence happens in the United States, not only do we have a habit of ignoring its root causes, we also reduce it to a “few rotten apples.” But in either case, we do not blame America’s “culture,” or the American nation as a whole. The inability to properly understand the sexual violence epidemic in India, and the resort to “cultural” or “national” explanations for these crimes, exhibits orientalism and reductionism. Moreover, it serves to undermine awareness of sexual violence in the West. And perhaps, most importantly, it does not give us meaningful solutions for how Indian society, as it demands justice for the victims of sexual violence, can move forward to protect the rights of women.

Thackeray was as bad as they come. His followers in the USA are aligned with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer which should tell you about the kind of ideological perspective they come from.

Bal Thackeray Dead: Indian Hindu Hardliner Dies At 86 Of Cardio-Respiratory Arrest

(HuffingtonPost)

MUMBAI, India – Bal Thackeray, a Hindu extremist leader linked to waves of mob violence against Muslims and migrant workers in India, died Saturday after an illness of several weeks. He was 86.

Jalil Parkar, a doctor who treated him, said the politician had gone into cardio-respiratory arrest “which we tried to revive (him from), but we were unable to revive.”

Thackeray, a one-time cartoonist, formed the Shiv Sena – which means Shiva’s Army – in 1966 in Maharashtra. The political party’s main aim has been to keep people who are not from Maharashtra out of the state and stem the spread of Islam and western values.

Thackeray’s Sena is among the most xenophobic of India’s Hindu right-wing political parties and held power in Mumbai from 1995 to 2000. His supporters often called him Hindu Hriday Samrat or emperor of Hindu hearts.

As news of his death was announced outside his residence in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, many of his supporters sobbed and burst into tears.

Thousands of his followers from across his power base in the western state of Maharashtra began gathering outside his home in the state capital as the news of his ill health spread earlier this week. Mumbai police were on high alert because of the violent history of the group.

In 1992, members of Hindu right-wing groups, including the Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party, were instrumental in destroying a 16th century mosque in north India that they said was the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama, and Thackeray was blamed for the violence and rioting that followed. In Mumbai alone, nearly 1,000 people were killed.

Sanjay Raut, a spokesman for Thackeray’s party, appealed to his supporters to maintain peace.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to Thackeray’s son Udhav and offered his condolences. He appealed for “calm and sobriety during this period of loss and mourning.”

Lal Krishna Advani, a top leader of Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said Thackeray was uncompromising in his patriotism. “He possessed remarkable qualities of leadership.”

Throughout his political career Thackeray was a powerful, rabble-rousing orator who routinely sanctioned the use of violence to propagate his political views. He was arrested at least twice for his for inflammatory speeches and writing.

His extreme regional and religious parochialism led him to advocate Hindu suicide bombers and planting bombs in Muslim neighborhoods to “protect the nation and all Hindus.”

His followers often attacked and rampaged through the offices of media houses that he claimed were anti-Maharashtrian and anti-Hindu and threatened to dig up cricket pitches ahead of matches between largely Hindu India and its Muslim-majority neighbor Pakistan.

Even though the Shiv Sena’s political grip over Mumbai – its longtime power base – has been waning over the last decade, it still commands tens of thousands of violent followers.

The slight, bespectacled leader often appeared in front of his supporters seated on a silver throne-like chair, a gift from party workers.

In the early 1990s he led a successful campaign to drop what he called the colonially tainted name Bombay – a Portuguese derivation of “beautiful bay” – and replace it with Mumbai, after the local Marathi language name for a Hindu goddess. The city is the capital of Maharashtra state.

His supporters continued to sporadically threaten violence against places and institutions that held on to the old name like the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Bombay High Court, the elite Bombay Scottish School and countless restaurants, shops and offices.

More recently his followers campaigned against the celebration of Valentine’s Day in several Indian cities. They attacked shops and restaurants that allowed young couples to mark the day.

Through the early 2000s, Thackeray had appeared to be grooming his nephew Raj Thackeray as his political successor ahead of his own son Uddhav but in 2006 the infighting between the cousins led to Raj breaking away from the Sena. He formed the Maharashtra Reconstruction Party, which held onto the Sena’s political planks of regional and religious chauvinism interspersed with occasional violence.

Thackeray is survived by two sons. His body will be kept in a park on Sunday to allow people to pay their last respects before his cremation.

The article below is a great example of uniting communities and learning about the “other” through art. (h/t: Hakeem)

Calligraphy to Bridge Religious Communities in God’s Own Country 

(India: Future of Change)

Down in the heart of Kerala (God’s Own Country), an Indian Muslim calligrapher is using his skills in the art of the ink flourishes to bridge Jewish and Muslim communities.

Thoufeek Zakriya is an Indian Muslim from Cochin who does calligraphy in a number of languages, including Arabic, Samaritan, Syriac and Sanskrit.  More interestingly, he is a Muslim who does masterful Hebrew calligraphy.

While study in madrasa, he learned that the Jewish people were considered by Islam to be ahl al-kitab(“People of the Book”), which sparked a curiosity in him to learn more about this religious community.  His curiosity led him to find a copy of the Gideon’s Bible, which had a page with prayers in in 23 different languages.  He decided to find what encompassed the Hebrew word for God, so using the page as his “Rosetta Stone” he was able to decipher what letters entailed the Hebrew name for the Lord.

He became more interested in Judaism and Hebrew calligraphy, and reached out to the tiny yet historic Jewish community in Cochin.   Thoufeek purchased some Hebrew texts he found at a streetside book shop and he went about learning the Hebrew alphabet.  His studies in Hebrew led him to begin crafting calligraphy of Jewish prayers such as the birkat habayit (prayer for the home) in golden resplendent brilliance.  He also began creating replicas of the Hebrew bible, the Torah.

More importantly, Thoufeek does something very unique: he has crafted Hebrew calligraphy in the ancientKufic Arabic script.  Such work is a rarity in the calligraphic world, and his innovations in the Kufic/Hebrew calligraphy has brought Thoufeek accolades from admirers from all over the world.

Read the rest…

A beautiful, heart warming story. (H/T: Jai)

Shades Of The Old Punjab

by CHANDER SUTA DOGRA, Outlook India

Brothers In Arms

• Around 200 mosques across Punjab have been repaired, rebuilt or built from scratch with the help of Sikhs and Hindus in the last 10 years
• Many destroyed during Partition riots are now being restored by village communities
• In some cases, the Jamaat-e-Islami is involved, but most are unorganised village-level efforts
• It’s a reassertion, after decades, of Punjab’s unique religious and cultural synthesis

***

The Ghuman family of Sarwarpur, near Ludhiana, cannot understand what the fuss is about. Ever since Sajjan Singh Ghuman, an NRI Sikh living in England, rebuilt a mosque in his native village that was damaged during Partition, the shrine, as well as his family back home, have attracted the curiosity of  outsiders. “We never imagined we would be on a Punjabi TV channel just because my elder brother rebuilt this small mosque for the poor Muslim families of our village. For him, it was just a gesture towards restoring the collective heritage of our village,” says Sajjan’s brother, Joga Singh, who manages the family’s lands in Sarwarpur. Sure. But what Joga and his family, or even the TV channel, do not know is that the sentiment that inspired his brother’s act is being manifested in scores of villages across Punjab, with Sikhs and Hindus joining hands to either rebuild old and damaged mosques or build new ones. Odd? Perhaps. But Punjab, as admirers of its unique religious synthesis say, has always defied stereotypes to do its own thing.

That spirit comes through clearly in the actions of a group of school and college boys from 600-year-old Ajitwal village near Moga. During Partition, when Muslims fled Ajitwal, just as they fled in waves from other parts of Punjab, an ancient village mosque was vandalised. As years passed, someone encroached on its grounds and the place became a village dumping ground. A neem tree on its compound became a hang-out for the village youth. One day, a bunch of boys decided to clear the muck. Within days, the entire village—now made up of Hindus and Sikhs—joined them. Says 20-year-old Laddi: “We were never short of money or material. Anyone who passed this way would contribute in cash or kind. Someone brought five bags of cement, another donated bricks and so on….” This, when there were no permanent Muslim families left in the village. But, once repaired, the mosque began to be used. A few Muslim migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, labourers and petty tradespeople, began praying here. A maulvi from a neighbouring village now comes to conduct Friday namaaz. To the delight of 80-year-old Nachattar Kaur, who was born and brought up here, the sound of the azaan (call to prayer) is being heard again, after decades. “We have always believed in this shrine,” she says. “It is a house of God. God bless these boys for restoring the oldest relic of our village.”

In Malerkotla, the headquarters of the state unit of Jamaat-e-Islami (Hind), publisher and Jamaat member Ramzan Sayeed, who has also translated the Quran into Punjabi, observes, “It is only in Punjab that Sikhs and Hindus are helping to build masjids with tractors, labour and money.” That this should happen at a time when Islamists are being reviled and resisted across the world makes it remarkable; and that it should be happening in a land where the soil is soaked with the blood of Partition, and stories of murder, rape and looting have been passed down the generations, renders it especially significant.

In the months after Partition, some 50,000 mosques across present-day Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were destroyed, burnt or converted into temples and gurudwaras—homes, even. Today, Muslims comprise just 1.5 per cent of Punjab’s population, mostly migrant labour from UP and Bihar and some Gujjar families from Jammu and Kashmir who have settled here, in addition to small pockets of Muslims, such as those belonging to Malerkotla, who did not go to Pakistan in 1947.

Not mere mortar and bricks Students of Ajitwal village, near Moga, rebuilt the ancient masjid

However, in the last decade or so, the Jamaat has managed, with extraordinary village-level support, including money and materials, to free and revive about 120 mosques. Scores of others, like the one at Ajitwal, have been revived or rebuilt purely by villagers themselves. Jamaat president Arshad Ali told Outlook, “We consciously involve Sikhs and Hindus whenever we help build a new mosque or repair an old one; and every time, the community’s response is overwhelming.” He reels off the names of scores of villages where this has happened. One of them, Diwa Gandwan in Fatehgarh Sahib, has only 17 Muslim families, most of them poor labourers. Mohammed Jameel, a farm labourer who lives in the village, told Outlook, “We never imagined we could have a masjid of our own, but we do now. It would not have been possible without the help of the Sikh landlords here, who filled up the low-lying area by bringing us earth in their tractor trollies.” The first brick of the mosque was laid by a Sikh priest from Fatehgarh Sahib, who also donated money.

Arshad Ali contrasts this attitude with the one that prevailed when he began working for the Jamaat in Punjab some 30 years ago: “We used to face opposition whenever we tried to assert ourselves. But all that has changed now. Our effort to construct masjids is helping foster religious brotherhood in Punjab.” Hassan Mohammed, the imam of the Jama Masjid at Mandi Gobindgarh, recalls that last year, when he tried to mobilise Muslims of Jhampur village to rebuild their village mosque, they were afraid of even the suggestion. He then approached the sarpanch, a Jat Sikh, who immediately got a few boys to clear the overgrown area. Other villagers chipped in with contributions in cash and kind and, soon, what was once a crumbling ruin became a vibrant place of worship. Such stories abound in rural Punjab today.

There are no clear-cut answers for why this is happening. It helps, clearly, that Muslims are only a tiny, largely poor, community here, no threat to anyone, and that sympathy for the underdog is a distinctive Punjabi—especially Jat Sikh—trait. But that’s only a partial explanation, as is the other obvious one—that this is a manifestation of collective guilt over the atrocities committed by Sikhs and Hindus against Muslims during Partition.

Guilt could be a factor, acknowledges Sikh historian and writer Prof Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon, “There is no doubt,” he says, “that the atrocities of Partition are a blot on the history of the Sikhs. We, as a martial race, are not supposed to attack the weak and unarmed, but it happened, and ever since then, there has been remorse.” He recalls how a few years before his death, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, long-time president of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), confessed that he too had killed a Muslim during the Partition riots and felt haunted by his act. Possibly to atone for the act, Tohra constructed a mosque in his native village and laid its first brick with his own hands.

On the other hand, much of the present effort to revive mosques is coming from a generation that does not have the blood of Partition on its hands; one that has witnessed and endured, rather, the violent Sikh separatism during the ’80s. That’s why Pramod Kumar, director of the Chandigarh-based Institute of Development and Communications, feels this is “the collective reassertion of Punjab’s unique cultural synthesis” and “an attempt to build a secular Punjabi identity, as opposed to a communal identity or religious one”….

Continue Reading…

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Residents of Bogalusa, Louisiana were whipped up into a patriotic fervor based on a misunderstanding about a US military service member supposedly being denied service at a Texaco gas station (h/t: Al).

In fairness to Bogalusa residents the usage of “ragheads” was only uttered on camera by the video maker, whose anti-Muslim slurs are not only revolting but show an active connection with the rhetoric of the USA’s Islamophobia Movement. One does wonder how prevalent such sentiments are among other Bogalusa residents?

According to the website “Truth or Fiction” the whole incident was based on a false rumor that went viral on the internet.

The protest took place on June 7,2012 over what the owner claims to be a misunderstanding, according to an article written that day in the Bogalusa Daily News. The local paper said that the protest began after a Facebook message went viral from text forwarded from “a woman who sent a mobile phone message claiming that her husband was in line at the store and heard a uniformed member of the National Guard told ‘We don’t serve your kind.’”  Click here for Bogalusa Daily News story.

The article also stated that the owner, an East Indian immigrant named Savi, “said she has never refused to serve anyone unless they did not have proper identification for a controlled item.”

At the time of our investigation, no members of the military have yet to come forward claiming discrimination of any kind from the Texaco truck stop.

This episode exposes how distrust and deep seated anxiety about  the “other,” in this case Islam and Muslims can easily manifest itself and shatter communal harmony.

A remote news crew from local WSDU-TV was on scene to report on the settlement between the protesters and the Texaco station. The owner issued a public apology over the misunderstanding.

There have been clashes in the Indian state of Assam in which Muslims have had their houses burned down and some have been hacked to death. Many reports state that the violence began when 4 Bodos were allegedly killed by Muslims on July, 20 (h/t: Hassan). In actuality the issue is far more complex, the recent violence began in May,

Trouble started on May 29 with the Muslim youth group, the All Bodoland Minority Students’ Union, protesting against the removal of a signboard from a mosque, allegedly illegally built on a forest area. The local Bodoland Territorial Council administration prevented the protesters from forcing shops and offices to close, which resulted in a fracas and injuries to some people. On July 6, two Muslim youths were killed by unidentified gunmen in Kokrajhar district.

Thirteen days later, on July 19, two more Muslim youths, leaders of the ABMSU, were killed in the same district. On July 20, four former Bodo Liberation Tigers cadres were killed by a Muslim mob. The incident sparked off a series of attacks and counter-attacks the same night and later, blew up into full-scale conflict. Rioters indulged in both pre-planned as well as opportunistic violence- killing, burning and ransacking. Factors rooted in politics and demography provide explanations for the recent flare up.

AlJazeera English:

Over 200,000 mostly Muslims have fled their homes. Is it curious that the religion of the Muslims is the main identifier of who they are? Isn’t it also curious that reports are stating that the violence was sparked off the by killing of the four Bodo militiamen? It is unfortunate that a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of this complex issue, involving factors of demography, ethnicity and immigration have been reduced to a battle between the Bodos and “Muslims.” It feeds many false Islamophobic narratives, as most of the comment sections of these reports, such as the one on the Huffington Post have been reduced to blaming “Islam” for the violence.

by Anupam Nath and Wasbir Hussain

BIJNI, India — Indian authorities on Thursday rushed more troops to quell ethnic violence in a remote northeastern state where dozens of people have been killed over the past week and villagers are frightened to return to their burned-out homes.

Clashes between members of the ethnic Bodo community and Muslim settlers in Assam state have left 42 people dead and 13 others missing, state officials said. Six of the 42 were killed by security forces, who were given a mandate Tuesday to shoot rioters on sight.

The killing of four Bodo men last week sparked off violent attacks by Bodo tribespeople on Muslim villages.

Hundreds of homes were torched and more than 200,000 people fled their homes for relief camps set up in schools and government buildings.

On Thursday, Assam’s Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi met with Bodo and Muslim leaders in an effort to defuse tensions and restore peace, while the federal government ordered more troops to be sent to the three worst-hit districts, Kokrajhar, Dibrugarh and Chirang.

A curfew has helped curtail the violence, but local officials said the situation remains tense. Police reported sporadic violence in Chirang as armed bands of Bodo youth roamed the deserted villages.

Soldiers have orders to shoot to kill arsonists and a 24-hour curfew is in place, said G. D. Tripathi, Assam’s home secretary.

There are already 6,000 army and paramilitary soldiers on the ground. They have marched through towns and villages in a show of force to give residents confidence to return to their homes.

Thousands of frightened villagers are crammed into about 125 relief camps hastily set up by local administrators.

Each day there is a scramble for limited water and food. Harried officials are trying to provide food, clothes and mattresses for the streams of people who have lost all their possessions.

Among them is a dazed-looking Laily Begum, a mother of three small children. On Sunday, Begum’s Muslim husband was hacked to death by sword-wielding attackers near the town of Bijni in Chirang.

“I don’t know if I should be mourning my husband or fighting for food for my children,” she cries, tears snaking down her face.

Begum fled with her children and from a distance saw the attackers repeatedly stabbing her husband, Mohammad Hasen Ali. Her neighbors told her his body had been thrown into a river.

On Thursday, the Assam government announced that 600,000 rupees ($11,000) would be paid as compensation to the families of those killed.

[Edit and Update: It must be pointed out that Muslims have lived in Assam for many centuries, going back to the 13th century (h/t: Indian Muslim).

Muslims have been part of Assam since early thirteenth century. The migration of Bengali-speakers, both Hindus and Muslims, into Assam started in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century as a British policy to find people for filling government jobs and a majority of them came as labourers for tea plantation and jute cultivation.

Overlooking these historical migrations, these “insider experts” want to put all Bangla-speaking Muslim in the category of Illegal migrations or simply Bangladeshis. Even if we take the recent census data, the numbers do not show any signs of huge influx of Muslims into Assam. In 1951, Muslims were 26.60% of the state population while in 2001 their population share was 30.90%. The rate of growth is slower than Muslims growth in the rest of India, which will suggest that Muslims are leaving the state.]

(^Hindu nationalist organization fear-mongering about “Love Jihad”)

There is quite a fad to label everything “Jihad” especially amongst Islamophobes. The “Love Jihad” absurdity reared its conspiratorial head a few years ago and was immediately taken up by the likes of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller–eager as they always are to find some Muslamic crime to rail about.

It seems the “Love Jihad” hate campaign is resurfacing in the state of Kerala, India:

Muslim youths again targeted with ‘Love Jihad’ hate campaign in Kerala

by Abdul Bassith MA (TwoCircles.net)

Thiruvananthapuram: The Hindutva sponsored “Love Jihad” hate campaign against Muslim youths in Kerala has surfaced again after a brief lull. The campaign had already caused serious wounds to the communal harmony of the state and campaigners were back to their den soon after Kerala Police lodged cases under section 153 against websites of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and five other Hindutva websites on charges of pressing on with the hate campaigns even after court terming it baseless and Police reports rejecting any such allegations.

But a Malayalam weekly named Kalakaumudi having majority subscriptions in regions other than Malabar has now resumed the hate campaign in their recent edition of 10th June citing unauthentic central intelligence agency reports. The Hindutva websites too have now taken up this campaign and are altogether busy reviving those earlier terms like “Love”, “Romeo”, “Black Money”, “Land Mafia” in order to suffix “Jihad” with it.

Earlier more than any of those Hindutva websites it was the mainstream news dailies in Kerala, seemed keen on publishing such imaginative stories of ‘Muslim Jihadis’ pretending love towards Hindu and Christian girls to convert them to Islam. It still needs clarification on whether they took up the news from Hindutva websites or these websites took up exclusives published by these Malayalam news dailies. The news dailies, their weeklies and fortnightlies though published police clarifications and the court order calling “Love Jihad” allegations baseless in inner page columns, were never ready to make a confession. The media hate campaign brought about a situation where each and every movements and gestures of a Muslim youth in a campus or his work place was watched with suspicion by other community members.

The Kerala home ministry has taken a note of these latest allegations put forward by the Kalakaumudi weekly, which in its cover page says “Every month 180 girls are getting converted in Kerala”. The home ministry is concerned regarding conspiracies and attempts from a few corners to disrupt the already deteriorating communal texture of the state by spreading such rumours and unauthentic reports. The weekly on publication underwent a high demand and within a day copies were sold out.

Earlier on an exclusive scoop regarding – Muslim specific cyber surveillance in Kerala – the Kerala govt had accused the Madhyamam weekly, of ruining the religious harmony of the state. Madhyamam actually had only published the list of 258 email addresses belonging to Muslim journalists, students and politicians in Kerala, out of the 268 email addresses, the Kerala Police intelligence snooped into by even baselessly associating them with the banned SIMI. There wasn’t even a petty case registered against any of these individuals. Then instead of taking actions against those Police officers involved in the email snooping – the Home ministry then under the control of Chief Minister – was rather keen on witch hunting the weekly and the ones who leaked the news for it.

But now with the Kalakaumudi weekly again publishing unauthentic reports on “Love Jihad”, which the court and the Police had earlier ruled out, terming them as obvious attempt to destabilise the communal texture of the state; the Kerala govt is now under a deep silence and they are yet to consider it as one ruining the communal harmony of the state.

Police affidavit clears Muslim youth of love Jihad allegations
Accompanying this report, a few complaints have been registered against Muslim youths in some Police stations and Home Minister Thiruvanjoor Radhakrishnan said that any such complaints brought into the notice of the Home ministry will be examined. He said that bringing in so much sensationalism, emotions into the issue will disrupt the communal harmony and he noted that the “Love Jihad” campaign has been rather more rampant online.

One such complaint was by a Kshethra Samrakshana Samithi [Temple Protection Committee] worker named Unnikrishnan, who filed a habeas corpus petition at a court in Kerala accusing a Muslim youth named Haris of kidnapping his daughter to convert her to Islam.

The Kozhikode Police Commissioner G Sparjan Kumar in his affidavit before the court said that the girl was keeping relations with the Muslim youth since last six years. Their relation started when she was a school going girl and when he was working as a Bus conductor on her school route.

“Allegations like the youth is having links with Muslim communal organisations and that the girl has been kidnapped as part of their agenda to convert her, are mere doubts of a Father, who is an active worker of Kshethra Samrakshana Samithi”, said the Police Commissioner in his affidavit. The affidavit further noted that Unnikrishnan too got married to a Christian girl after similar love affair, and it was to her, this daughter was born. The court allowed the petitioner to give his arguments against the affidavit before 26th of June. The case will be again taken for hearing on 26th June.

I thought only Muslims employed beheading when a daughter strayed from traditional values? Don’t expect the Islamophobes to notice this one:

Ogad Singh, Indian Man, Reportedly Beheads Daughter In Rage Over Lifestyle

by PRAKASH BHANDARI (HuffingtonPost.com)

JAIPUR, India — Police say a man upset over his daughter’s lifestyle chopped her head off with a sword and then paraded it through his village before surrendering to authorities in western India.

Marble miner Ogad Singh’s 20-year-old daughter had been living with her parents in the Rajasthani village of Dungarji after leaving her husband two years ago.

Police Superintendent Umesh Ojha says Singh was upset by his daughter having affairs with men, and became enraged when she eloped with one of them two weeks ago.

Ojha says Singh forced her to return home Sunday, and beheaded her Monday with a sword.

Addendum Click link

Vinita Shaw and her sister both say they were beaten by neighbors for converting from Hinduism to Islam, and here I was thinking that it was only Muslims who had issues with those of their (former) co-religionists who leave the faith!

What if they were Muslim?:

Sisters beaten up for converting to Islam

by Arshad Ali (Indian Express)

A south Kolkata girl, who has converted from Hinduism to Islam, and her sister who is also keen to convert, were beaten up allegedly by the associates of the local councillor. The girls have also alleged police inaction.

Vinita Shaw, 25, a resident of 57/2B Bondel Road, adopted Islam in December last year. Her new name, vide an affidavit by a first class magistrate is, Taiba Khatoon (The Indian Express possesses a copy of the affidavit). Her sister, 18-year-old Pooja Shaw, too, expressed her wish to follow suit last week.

The conversion apparently did not go down too well with their neighbours, who, on June 8, beat up the two sisters and their family, including her mother and brother, with bricks and rods.

“We are a very poor family. My father is paralytic and bed-ridden. These people started a fight on the pretext that we dirty the place too much. But when they started beating us, they said unmentionable things as I have converted,” said Vinita. She also alleged that both sisters were abused and molested.

Vinita also claimed harassment at the hands of the police.“I went to the police station with a written complaint against Asim Bera, Tapas Bera, Abhishek Malakar, Krishna Ray, Akash Ray, Manoj Singh, Bikas Singh and Birju Paswan but investigating officer D D Roy Chowdhury tore it up and wrote it himself. He even refused to give me a copy of the complaint and when I insisted, he asked the other officer there to give it to me, referring to me with unmentionable names,” she said.

… contd.

Above, members of Raza Academy protest the US military courses which taught that the US is at war with Islam.

They believe there is a “conspiracy” to bomb Mecca and Medina. Whatever could have given them that idea, I wonder? Oh yeah, maybe the fact that the courses advocated “Hiroshima” measures to “defeat Islam.” Or slides like this in the courses presentation:

Hateful US military course instigates protest in Mumbai

By Rehan Ansari, TwoCircles.net,

Mumbai: Although the US has withdrawn the Military course that was instigating anti-Islamic sentiments among military officers, anger among Muslims over the issue is growing in India. Raza Academy, an organization of Barelivi Muslims, conducted a protest demonstration against the US for the idea of bombing Mecca and Madina, the holy cities of Muslim world. The protestors also expressed concern at the silence of Saudi Government over the issue.

Raza Acadmey staged protest on Friday in Azad Maidan, Mumbai. Condemning the US military syllabus, Syed Moinuddin Ashraf, presiding the demonstration said, “We believe that this is total in disregard of the Geneva Convention of 1949. It’s worse than Abu Garib. What they are talking about is essentially the Genocide of Muslims.”

Demanding serious actions against the guilty officers, members of Raza Academy said, “It’s imperative to take actions against the culprit officers and to study the impact of this course on 800 Military officers who were taught this syllabus.”

While talking to TwoCircles.net Saeed Noorie, Secretary of Raza Academy quoted from famous Obama speech to the Muslim World where he had said, “So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.”

Noorie demanded that the people promoting conflict must be brought to justice because they will create cycle of suspicion between America and the Muslim World.

Through a course, US military officers were being taught that America’s enemy is Islam in general, not just terrorists, and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following World War-II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima or the allied firebombing of Dresden.

Following the outcry over the hateful course, the Pentagon has suspended the course in late April when a student-military officer objected to the material.