Constitutionally Protected Oppression

By Faisal | Published: June 3, 2010

Pakistanis are constitutionally protected to deny full citizenship to their minority Ahmadiyya community and to gun them down in their mosques as they pray.

An Ahmadi muslim explains:

But don’t expect any ‘international condemnation’ of this kind.

Posted in Freedom of Religion, Human Rights | 1 Comment

Morality Bypass

By Faisal | Published: June 3, 2010

Ten muslims are shot and killed aboard a flotilla bound for Gaza and the world erupts in righteous moral indignation. Elsewhere, more than 100 Ahmadi muslims are slaughtered while they pray peaceably in two separate mosques in the city of Lahore in Pakistan, a country which refuses even to recognise them as equal citizens and sanctions state-sponsored violence against them, and there is near total silence.

Here is an excerpt from an article which compares the unequal responses by political groups, the media and various human rights organisations in Pakistan to the Flotilla atrocity with the mosque massacre of Ahmadis in Lahore. It highlights the skewed moral relativities and the morality bypass which turns some into vocal critics of violence perpetrated against muslims when committed by non-muslim actors (particularly when they are Americans or jews), but maintain a studied silence when muslims savagely oppress their own people.

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Posted in Moral relativism | 19 Comments

Israel: Lost at sea

By Faisal | Published: May 31, 2010

This video is distressing to watch and listen to. The report shows the Israeli army continuing to fire live ammunition at passengers even after they had raised a white flag.

Bradley Burston’s opinion piece in Haaretz comments on Israel following this inexplicable display of irrationality and barbarity.

Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel’s Vietnam.

Of course, we knew this could happen. On Sunday, when the army spokesman began speaking of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in terms of an attack on Israel, MK Nahman Shai, the IDF chief spokesman during the 1991 Gulf war, spoke publicly of his worst nightmare, an operation in which Israeli troops, raiding the flotilla, might open fire on peace activists, aid workers and Nobel laureates.

Update: Hussein Ibish’s thoughtful remarks on this terrible unforced error.

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Posted in Israel/Palestine | 36 Comments

Has beens and wanabees

By Guest | Published: May 30, 2010

This is a cross-post by Terry Fitzpatrick

There is an air of desperation about the announcement of a conference at The Camden Centre next Saturday the 5th of June. Announcements in the Morning Star and on Socialist Unity meant that the omens were not good and the line up of those speaking confirms that.

Islamophobia has, it seems, become the new Anti Semitism and anyone who criticises the more extreme elements of Islam who want to impose a caliphate, reduce women to the status of second class citizens and murder gays and apostates is routinely regarded as the modern day equivalent of a member of the Waffen SS, at least as far as the assortment of Trots, Stalinists and Islamofascists who will be gathering at Kings Cross next weekend are concerned.

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Posted in Islamism, The Far Left | 1 Comment

Now Bangladesh bans facebook

By Effendi | Published: May 30, 2010

It’s official: banning facebook in Southasia is now a nationally transmitted contagion. Bangladesh has imposed a “temporary ban” on facebook.

The official statement used the Pakistani pretext. The government banned facebook because it had “hurt the religious sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population” by carrying “offensive images” of Mohammed.

Go a little further and it transpires that the Bangladesh government enforced a ban not because facebook contained images that were offensive to muslims, but because it contained images that were offensive to the Prime Minister. A Bangladeshi blogger writes:

After publishing perverted images of Hasina and Khaleda (The Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition) in the second most popular site in Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion (RAB – a special force) arrested a youth named Mahbub Alam Rodin. Bangladeshis could not access Facebook soon after that.

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Posted in Freedom of Expression | 10 Comments

“Every Muslim Should Be A Terrorist”

By Faisal | Published: May 30, 2010

Everybody Loves Zakir

Zakir Naik, the Indian-born tele-evangelist for Peace TV, whose inflammatory remarks include extolling Muslims to “terrorise terrorist America” and who states western women make themselves “more susceptible to rape” by wearing revealing clothing, has been allowed into the country.

Naik will be appearing at Wembley Arena in London and in Sheffield on his British tour. David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, who described him as a “hate-monger”, the last time this Naik was allowed Britain in 2006.

There are few “hate-mongers” who are as popular or as revered by Muslims as Dr Zakir Naik. The man’s profile is massive and, thanks to the Peace TV footprint, his lectures are pumped out to millions of Muslims all around the world who avidly consume Naik’s diatribes. He is not affiliated to any Islamist political group nor is he known to have connections to any terrorist groups. He’s just your average muslim geezer with a big television audience.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

“Islamism”: Offended By Terminology

By Faisal | Published: May 29, 2010

Here is an example of Sunny Hundal’s tendency to promote the kind of pickled politics that he once purported to oppose. He has chosen to host an article supporting muslim identity politics written by Mohammad Amin of the Conservative Muslim Forum, who is also a candidate for the leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Amin is apparently opposed to the use of term “Islamism” because he believes it conflates violent jihadi extremism with the peaceful mobilisation of democratic political parties composed of “devout” muslims. Presumably he is opposed to violent jihad as a means to take over political institutions but supports the second methodology which advocates the organisation of muslims using peaceful democratic means.

However, upon a closer reading it becomes clear that the authors have conflated two very distinct agendas: One is the desire to overthrow governments by force and impose a particular vision of society. The other is the desire from an Islamic perspective to peacefully remake Muslim communities from within by encouraging Muslims to be more devout and by encouraging non-Muslims to learn about Islam.

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Posted in Islamism | 28 Comments

Sectarianism and the Legacy of Mawdudi

By Faisal | Published: May 29, 2010

Writing on his new blog, Inayat Bunglawala is upset by the aftermath of the horrific anti-Ahmadi killings in two mosques in Lahore in Pakistan. For a man who campaigned against the Ahmadi community when he was at the Muslim Council of Britain, we would query the crocodile quality of his tears.

He asks the question:

“More to the point who is actually teaching these murderers to engage in these kinds of acts?”

We might now know who taught the gunmen specifically, but we do know from whose teachings their ideology is directly derived. The extremist Salafi sectarianism and anti-Ahmaddiyya stance of the perpetrators of the mosque attacks comes straight out of the deeds and philosophy of Mawlana Mawdudi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islam. Mawdudi’s teachings are bedrock to the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Forum Europe and, in the not-so-distant past, Inayat Bunglawala himself.

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Posted in Sectarianism | 2 Comments

We Are All Ahmadi Now

By Guest | Published: May 29, 2010

In response to recent sectarian anti-Ahmadi bloodbath in Pakistan, this is a cross-post by Sepoy at Chapati Mystery

There is a mosque near my house in Berlin. I bike past it every time. I often stop at the light, and enjoy the minarets against the grey skies.

There is a mosque in Lahore, too.

Every attack, every atrocity, every massacre diminishes us all. This, I choose to lay at the feet of Mawdudi and his ilk, at the feet of Bhutto and his ilk, at the feet of our bearded muftis and their ilk. I blame those who deny citizenship to their brethren. I blame everyone who denies the freedom to practice their faith in peace.

I am afraid I have little else but rage and white hate for the perpetrators of this crime.

I am an Ahmadi.

Posted in Islamism, Sectarianism | Leave a comment

Pakistan’s sectarian problem

By Guest | Published: May 28, 2010

This is a cross-post from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalism

According to alarming reports from Pakistan, coordinated sectarian attacks on mosques in Lahore have led to the deaths of approximately 70 people.  Earlier today, gunmen armed with grenades and automatic weapons attacked two mosques 15 kilometres apart in the city. It seems to have followed the fedayeen style of operation that have becoming increasingly popular with jihadist groups in the region, since the 2008 assault on Mumbai and 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team attacks.  Three attackers also blew themselves up as police entered the building to end the siege.

One eyewitness described how one of the attackers “reminded me of the people who attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team, he was wearing similar clothes – the traditional Pakistani dress shalwar kameez and he looked like someone from a tribal area.” Early reports from Pakistan suggest that this was the work of the Punjabi wing of the Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), on which ICSR recently held a seminar.

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Posted in Islamism, Sectarianism | Leave a comment

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