Tuesday 31 July 2018

American Islamophobia’s Fake Facts

Published on
by

The con game of anti-Muslims


by

"As a religious minority in a country where their faith makes them potential victims of hate crimes, Muslims have stronger reasons than most Americans for believing in and practicing religious tolerance, not holy war." (Photo: Sue Ogrocki / AP)
"As a religious minority in a country where their faith makes them potential victims of hate crimes, Muslims have stronger reasons than most Americans for believing in and practicing religious tolerance, not holy war." (Photo: Sue Ogrocki / AP)
Anti-Muslim activists in the United States were operating in a "post-truth era" and putting out "alternative facts" long before those phrases entered the language. For the last decade they have been spreading provable falsehoods through their well-organized network of publications and websites.

A major theme of those falsehoods is telling the U.S. public that Islam is inherently dangerous and that American Muslims, even if they do not embrace extremist religious beliefs or violent actions, are still a threat to national security. To back up that conclusion, the well-funded Islamophobia publicity machine incessantly repeats two specific assertions.

A major theme of those falsehoods is telling the U.S. public that Islam is inherently dangerous and that American Muslims, even if they do not embrace extremist religious beliefs or violent actions, are still a threat to national security.
The first is that Muslims in this country have been engaged in a "stealth" or "civilizational jihad" -- a long-term, far-reaching conspiracy to infiltrate the U.S. legal system and other public institutions and bring America under Islamic law. The companion claim is that mainstream Muslim-American organizations are effectively "fronts" for the Muslim Brotherhood and so secretly controlled by international terrorists. In fact, the Brotherhoodhas not been designated as a terror organization by the U.S. government, and there are not the slightest grounds for thinking it, or any other secret force, controls any national Muslim-American group.

The Islamophobes offer only two pieces of supporting "evidence," one for each of those claims. Exhibit A is a document falsely called the Brotherhood's "master plan" for the clandestine effort to establish Muslim dominance in the United States. Exhibit B is a list of several hundred "unindicted co-conspirators," including the Council on American Islamic Relations and other mainstream national Muslim organizations, that federal prosecutors put into the record during a 2007 terrorism-financing trial in Texas.

If you look at the exhibits themselves, instead of the descriptions of them by anti-Muslim groups, it’s obvious that neither is what the Islamophobes say it is or proves what they allege it proves.


The Secret Plan That Wasn’t
Let’s start with the so-called master plan, a memorandum written nearly three decades ago that is not just the centerpiece but essentially the sole source for the tale of a "civilizational jihad" conspiracy.

The Islamophobia network unfailingly refers to the memorandum as an official declaration of Muslim Brotherhood strategy. Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy and perhaps the country's most prominent Islamophobe, called it "the Muslim Brotherhood secret plan for taking down our country." Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, two other leading voices in the anti-Muslim chorus, have written that "the Brotherhood lays out a plan [in the document] to do nothing less than conquer and Islamize the United States."

Those statements are, however, unsupported by facts of any sort. The document, dated May 1991 and titled "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," is real, but there is no evidence that it represents the views of anyone other than the single Brotherhood member who wrote it. For that matter, no one has ever found any indication that anyone other than the author even saw the text, written in Arabic, until 13 years after it was completed, when it was coincidentally unearthed in a storage box during an FBI search of a home in Annandale, Virginia. No other copy is known to exist. Its wording makes it unmistakably clear that the writer was proposing a strategy to the Brotherhood’s leadership, not presenting a plan approved by any authority. No evidence has come to light that suggests his proposals were ever considered, let alone adopted, by the Muslim Brotherhood leadership.

Gaffney and the many other Islamophobes who cite it as proof of a "stealth jihad" threat against the United States have never presented additional documentation of any kind. No known Muslim Brotherhood correspondence or records refer to the memorandum, as one would expect if there had been a formal discussion of it or even an exchange between the author and any Brotherhood governing body.

After a careful search of available Brotherhood records, researchers at Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative, which combats Islamophobia, determined that neither the memorandum nor its specific proposals appear in any documents they found. That includes records from the Brotherhood Shura Council's 1991 meeting, where the memorandum's author had specifically asked to have it put on the agenda. Other investigators have similarly failed to find any trace of the memorandum in other records. David Shipler, who wrote about it at length in his book Freedom of Speechcalls it an “orphan document” -- and a childless orphan at that.


Taking Down Our Country? Not Exactly...
As well as falsely representing the memorandum's status, the Islamophobes are also notably less than accurate in describing its contents.

They regularly quote a single sentence that refers to "destroying the Western civilization from within" so that "God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." But that’s the only line in 18 pages of text that even comes close to suggesting the idea of "taking down our country," as Gaffney puts it. Aside from that single reference there is no other mention of destroying Western civilization, no discussion of when that downfall might come about or how it might be achieved "from within." There’s not a word about penetrating government structures or the legal system, nothing about clandestine action or a secret plot to take power.

Instead, the plan's dominant concept -- similar to the evangelical vision preached in many religions -- is achieving Islamic supremacy through proselytizing and conversion.
 Virtually the entire text focuses on believers, not non-believers, and how to organize and strengthen the Muslim community in the U.S. so that it will be better able to carry out that effort.

"It is not a plot. It is a missionary strategy," Edward Curtis IV, professor of religious studies and editor of the Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History, told me in an email after reading the memorandum. The document comes much closer to that description than to Gaffney's. At its heart is a long list of specific ideas for establishing -- openly, not secretly -- Muslim structures in many areas of public life: education, law, media, financial institutions, art and culture, social and charitable work, and so on. A recommendation to create "clubs for training and learning self-defense techniques" is the only item on the list that even glancingly touches on any sort of violent action.

The purpose of such an organizing effort, the author explains, is to pursue the Brotherhood's declared goal of "enablement of Islam in North America," which he says has these components: "establishing an effective and a stable Islamic Movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally, and which works to expand the observant Muslim base, aims at unifying and directing Muslims' efforts, presents Islam as a civilization alternative, and supports the global Islamic State wherever it is."

When those aims are achieved, the writer argues, Muslims will be more united, politically and economically stronger, truer to their faith, and more committed to dawa(proselytizing), which will eventually realize the Prophet's vision and establish Islam as the universally accepted one true religion. For many believers, dawa (also spelled dawah) has political as well as spiritual goals, including the ultimate establishment of an Islamic state. But the Brotherhood has traditionally conceived of it as a nonviolent process, conducted through persuasion and grassroots organizing, not a violent one carried out through acts of terror or sabotage.

The memorandum's message is consistent with the Brotherhood's conservative theology and its dream of an Islamized world. But it is not the sinister conspiracy the Islamophobes keep talking about without providing any evidence that it exists


The Co-Conspiracy Theory Is Missing Any Facts
The other main thread in the anti-Muslim narrative -- the charge that mainstream Muslim-American organizations generally, and CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) in particular, have "terror ties" -- is similarly based on a single piece of “evidence.” Like the Brotherhood’s "master plan," it, too, is misleadingly presented and does not prove the Islamophobes' allegations.

The document that supposedly verifies the claim that CAIR and other groups are linked to Islamist terrorism is a list of "unindicted co-conspirators" attached to a pre-trial brief submitted by prosecutors in 2007 in the Holy Land Foundation case. (By the way, that’s the same trial where the "explanatory memorandum" first surfaced.) In that case, five leaders of a Texas-based Islamic charity were eventually convicted of donating to charitable programs linked with Hamas, the group that now controls the Gaza Strip and is a U.S. government-designated terrorist organization.

That list was not submitted as evidence and, despite the ominous sound of that label "co-conspirator," it was not accompanied by any specific allegations of terrorist involvement or of an explicit conspiratorial act by any of the organizations or individuals named on the list. Rather, the prosecutors filed the brief for purely tactical reasons. Their aim: getting around the usual ban on hearsay testimony, which can be introduced when an out-of-court statement comes from someone officially named as a co-conspirator.

In the Holy Land case itself, the defendants were not accused of directly aiding any terrorist activity, and no specific violent act is mentioned anywhere in the charges. The U.S. government itself acknowledged that some of the donated funds supported legitimate humanitarian projects.

The connection with CAIR is even more tenuous. The only link: that CAIR's founder, Omar Ahmad, was associated with the U.S. Palestine Committee, an umbrella group for Holy Land and other organizations. Ahmad's activities, however, took place in the early 1990s before Hamas was declared a terrorist group.

The vast majority of American Muslims oppose extremism and violence by Muslims or anyone else and have no wish to live under the brutal rule practiced by jihadist fanatics.
In a 2009 ruling on a motion from CAIR and two other organizations seeking to be removed from the list, a U.S. district judge held that the co-conspirator designation was "unaccompanied by any facts" indicating possible terrorist connections. Strongly criticizing the prosecutors for putting it into the open record in the first place, he ordered the list sealed. It had, however, already been so widely circulated that no order could keep it from public view. 

Meanwhile, after reviewing the list, the Justice Department concluded that no criminal investigation of any sort was warranted.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the two other organizations named on the list -- the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) -- prosecutors made no claim that the "co-conspirators" had actually conspired in any way to help terrorists or engaged in any other criminal activity. In a press release accompanying one of its court filings, the ACLU noted that "the government conceded... that it had absolutely no evidence proving that either ISNA or NAIT had engaged in a criminal conspiracy." The lead prosecutor in the Holy Land case, the ACLU statement went on, told the organizations' lawyers that they "were not subjects or targets in the HLF prosecution or in any other pending investigation."

In the more than 11 years since the list was made public, no new information has emerged that corroborates the inflammatory assertion that CAIR or the other Muslim-American groups are terrorist organizations or fronts for Hamas. Nor have researchers who track homegrown terror cases turned up any known link between a national Muslim-American organization and any violent incident.

David Sterman, who manages the think tank New America's extensive Terrorism in America database, says flatly, "Neither CAIR nor any other major American Muslim organization has played a role in jihadist terrorist plotting in the United States." (That's true of the Muslim Brotherhood, too. Internationally, some Brotherhood offshoots have engaged in terrorism. But despite overwrought claims from the anti-Muslim set, the Brotherhood has never been implicated in any violent act of terror in the United States. Even the Trump administration has decided not to add it to the list of officially designated terror organizations.)

Proving a negative is always a hard proposition, but one strong backup for this one is what the Islamophobes themselves say -- or, more precisely, don't say. While they unceasingly slam CAIR's alleged terrorism ties, Gaffney, Geller, and their cohorts have not offered a single plausible example of an incident of Islamist terrorism in which CAIR or one of the other organizations on their smear list was involved.

If the Islamophobes had even one actual case, they would certainly have proclaimed it nonstop, at top volume. So its absence from their rhetoric is a clear sign that they have no such evidence -- in all likelihood because, like the Muslim Brotherhood's "civilizational jihad," it doesn't exist.


Inventing Make-Believe Enemies Helps the Real Ones
Those untruths are not just bigoted and dishonest but dangerous. In the struggle against the real threat from violent Islamic extremism, the Islamophobes' false statements and overall message help the terrorists, not the security of Americans.

Falsely demonizing all Muslims, their beliefs, and their institutions is exactly the wrong way to make Americans safer, because the more we scare ourselves with imaginary enemies, the harder it will be to find and protect ourselves from real ones. As New America's David Sterman points out, "The vast majority of jihadist activity today is not even organized by radical clerics, returned fighters, or militant operatives but instead is mediated online or via small peer groups of friends." Those threats will not be detected by pursuing nonexistent conspiracies. The surest way to find them will be through information from relatives, neighbors, religious teachers, fellow worshippers -- that is, in the great majority of cases, fellow Muslims.

The vast majority of American Muslims oppose extremism and violence by Muslims or anyone else and have no wish to live under the brutal rule practiced by jihadist fanatics. As a religious minority in a country where their faith makes them potential victims of hate crimes, Muslims have stronger reasons than most Americans for believing in and practicing religious tolerance, not holy war. Keeping Muslim Americans as allies and maintaining their trust in our common values and political and legal institutions will be critical in successfully opposing extremist violence. Losing that trust and driving them away, as the Islamophobes' ugly falsehoods inevitably will, can only help the terrorists.

Meet VIAB: Virginia’s Taxpayer-Funded Israel Lobby

State funding for Israeli companies, politicized textbooks and fighting BDS


by  



The Virginia-Israel Advisory Board VIAB has one key difference with scores of privately funded state chambers of commerce created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government’s policy agenda.

Originally created by an uncodified act in 2001, VIAB has been funded by Commonwealth of Virginia taxpayers. Its charter is to “advise the Governor on ways to improve economic and cultural links between the Commonwealth and the State of Israel, with a focus on the areas of commerce and trade, art and education, and general government.” VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.

According to emails recently released under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, VIAB’s lofty claims about creating Virginia jobs and mutually beneficial business opportunities faced growing skepticism inside the governor’s office. VIAB also uses state resources to fight Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. BDS is a nonviolent movement to pressure Israel to stop violating Palestinian human rights. VIAB faced intense scrutiny over its handling of funds by the Virginia State Attorney General. Resistance to public scrutiny and oversight led VIAB to lobby for more "independence" from the governor in early 2018. This move sounded alarm bells at another Israel advocacy organization which feared that VIAB could face public backlash.

VIAB’s charter severely restricts who can exercise power on its board to the state Israel advocacy community. By law 13 of the 29-citizen members of the VIAB board had to be drawn from four Virginia-based Jewish community federations. Like other such federations across the nation, Virginia’s are heavily involved in advocating for Israel, fundraising and hosting candidate forums. In 2017 tax filings, the four federations that provide board members to VIAB raised a combined $20 million in tax exempt funding. Like other federations, these charities uniformly claimed to the IRS that they did not engage in any lobbying activities.

Early in 2018, the federations that staff VIAB (PDF) attempted to ram through a series of controversial changes to Virginia K-12 textbooks with the help of an outside Israel advocacy organization, the "Institute for Curriculum Services." The proposed edits to McGraw Hill, Prentice Hall, National Geographic and other publisher textbooks demanded they teach that Israel does not occupy any foreign territory and that Arabs alone were responsible for all crisis initiation in Middle East conflicts, among other dubious claims. When the stealth campaign was disclosed, it provoked an immediate "campaign for textbook accuracy" from the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights alongside prominent state educators. VCHR is a coalition of 16 organizations representing 8,000 Virginians.

VIAB makes aggressive claims about the return on investment it brings to Virginia’s economy, which are then trumpeted and celebrated by the local federations. One 2010 claim asserted "VIAB has added approximately 1,134 new jobs Virginia’s workforce that in turn have generated an estimated $38.4 million in state tax revenues over the past 10 years," while complaining about a cut that brought VIAB’s state budget "below $130,000." However, few of VIAB’s major initiatives have panned out.

VIAB’s work to bring Israeli airline El Al Dulles-to-Tel Aviv nonstop flights produced nothing after a decade of announcements, online petitions and $300 million investment infrastructure forecasts. In May of 2018, VIAB lamented that despite a visit by Governor McAuliffe to El Al headquarters in Israel, Dulles airport had been passed over in favor of San Francisco and Miami for El Al’s "next direct flights." VIAB lobbying campaigns, meetings, state visits and petitions could apparently not overcome lack of market demand.

VIAB maintains a veil of secrecy over some of its projects. In 2013, the VIAB board gave an aquaculture project the code name "Project Jonah" stating that "All Board members are asked to refer to the project by this code name. Leaked information could jeopardize funding opportunities from the State.”

Obtaining massive state and other local funding for Israeli projects is undeniably VIAB’s principal objective. VIAB boasted in 2015 that "Project Jonah has secured a $10 million grant conditional on meeting certain benchmarks including matching private funds. Other funds of at least $1 million have also been awarded in Tazewell County and additionally Virginia Tech was involved in securing $500,000 from Federal and local sources for R&D." Documents reveal some VIAB board members have business ties to the Israel projects for which funding is sought. However, the profile of Israeli activity in Virginia also reveals the success of BDS. Few Israeli companies risk boycotts through greenfield foreign direct investment in Virginia by operating subsidiaries under their own Israeli parent organization. Instead, most attempt to license technology or engage in joint ventures with U.S. companies

VIAB thrived during Governor Terry McAuliffe’s administration (2014-2018). Among McAuliffe’s most generous out of state campaign contributors were Israel boosters Haim Saban and J.B. Pritzker. McAuliffe was a regular at off-the-record "no press allowed" appearances before Israel advocacy organizations where he was encouraged to talk about "the Virginia Advisory Board and its successes" But internal emails reveal how VIAB chafed under open meeting and sunshine laws and the commonwealth’s financial reins even under McAuliffe. After the governor’s office became skeptical about VIAB’s operations, VIAB deployed a strategy used for decades by Israel affinity organizations in crisis such as the Jewish Agency for Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA): a complete reconstitution.

Before stepping down at the end of the McAuliffe administration in January, Virginia Secretary of Commerce Todd Patterson Haymore complained in a private email (PDF) about VIAB’s job creation claims. "I can’t argue with the short annual report where they stated they helped create 127 jobs/$436k tax dollars; however, the annual report is likely the most inflated without merit that I’ve seen in my decade here."

VIAB’s taxpayer funded anti-BDS lobbying inside the governor’s office blossomed. At a July 26, 2016 meeting at the state capitol, VIAB worked to implement a legislative version of the State of New York’s anti-boycott executive order. The Virginia General Assembly subsequently passed resolution HJ 177 which claimed that the BDS movement was hampering peace and preventing negotiations while claiming boycotts are not a legitimate accountability tactic. Across the nation, such Anti-boycott laws and resolutions have similarly passed with few organizations or entities claiming any financial role in lobbying for their passage. There may be a reason for the stealthy approach. Polling indicates most Americans oppose new US laws banning boycotts as a response to Israel’s human rights abuses.

The VIAB came under the scrutiny of the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council, when in July of 2017 VIAB handed departing executive director Ralph Robbins a check from the Virginia Israel Foundation. VIAB claimed the cash was not unlawful outside compensation or a bonus for a job well done, but rather a "farewell gift." (PDF)

The Virginia Office of the Attorney General issued on May 22, 2017 a secret letter to the VIAB "regarding the selection and appointment of the position of Executive Director of the Virginia-Israel Advisory Board ." The VIAB apparently considered the letter a challenge to its authority to pick and install its own executive director without the governor’s interference. VIAB had already begun searching for a "suitable" successor executive director to Robbins by posting job descriptions on Israel advocacy organization websites.

In early 2018, VIAB shaped (PDF) and monitored HB1297, a new law designed to "keep the VIAB independent" by transferring funding and oversight of VIAB from the office of the governor to Virginia’s legislature and reducing the number of gubernatorial appointments from 13 to five.

After passage, the VIAB hoped it would gain the authority to hire its own staff (under the old authorizing law, the Office of the Governor served "as staff to the Board.") VIAB would also no longer be subject to the governor’s oversight via control of the purse strings. VIAB chairman Norm Chaskin explained in a January 25, 2018 email (PDF) that the bill "adds back the requirement that the Governor and all other agencies shall assist the [VIAB] Board upon request…We believe this will accomplish what we have been talking about in our Board meeting for the last couple of years….Adding the word ‘independent’…shows that we are not part of any other agency or government office, which was the original idea in establishing the board."

This VIAB independence did not include severing its state funding, since thelegislation as proposed by VIAB (PDF) required, "all members shall be reimbursed for all reasonable and necessary expenses incurred in the performance of their duties…"

The VIAB’s move worried the Jewish Community Relations Council for Greater Washington’s executive committee, which warned via email (PDF) that "the request to grant Virginia’s Israel development activities special status, status that no other economic development group enjoys, may draw negative attention to VIAB and result in VIAB’s dissolution and absorption into Virginia’s greater economic development activities."

However, the bill reconstituting VIAB passed Virginia’s House and Senate on March 20, 2018. VIAB felt liberated and quickly filed to cover with state funds the expenses of its handpicked executive director and committed anti-BDS evangelist Dov Hoch’s travel amounting to"$1,500-$2,000" as he journeyed through Virginia to discuss VIAB with Virginia "Legislative Services" on his way back to Israel.

VIAB quietly operates as a taxpayer-funded lobbyist for a foreign country in the fifth most economically important state of the union. Whether VIAB ever faces the backlash feared by a fellow Israel advocacy organization may depend on the actions of vastly more representative Virginia-based grassroots organizations dedicated to conditioning state support for Israel on improving its deplorable human rights record.


Note: VIAB rebranded itself as the Virginia-Israel Advisory Authority as part of in its recent legislative reconstitution.

Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington and the author of the 2016 book, Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby moves America now available as an audiobook.

https://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2018/07/30/meet-viab-virginias-taxpayer-funded-israel-lobby/

Defeat of Religious Parties in Electoral Politics in South Asia


by 




The recent elections in Pakistan in which the Jamaat-i-Islami had a poor showing have made as clear as day that the homogeneous culture advocated by this politico-religious organization and vigilante groups affiliated with it lacks mass appeal in South Asia.
Although the Jamaat hasn’t enjoyed electoral success in either India, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh, the politico-religious organization hasn’t lagged behind in forging tacit alliances to relish mainstream power. In order to jog the memories of the readers, I underscore that in South Asia, historically, the Jamaat-e-Islami has always been pro-establishment.
Elections in Kashmir in which the Jammat-i-Islami Participated
Subsequent to the large-scale arrests of leaders and members of the Front, elections were held in the state in 1971–72 in which the Congress orchestrated a landslide victory for itself, managing to acquire 5 out of 6 parliamentary seats and 56 out of 73 Assembly seats. That year the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gained visibility in the politically disputed state by garnering support to win 2 seats in Jammu.
In another unforeseen and interesting development, the Jamaat-i-Islami – which had insistently disavowed Kashmir’s accession to India, and is currently a vocal opponent of elections held in J & K within the framework of the Constitution of India – in a tacit understanding with the Congress regime, managed to get 5 representatives accommodated in the Legislative Assembly.
The 1977 in Jammu and Kashmir elections were a landmark event in the history of Kashmir, with the Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah-led National Conference eradicating the Congress presence in the Valley and capturing an indisputable majority in the Legislative Assembly, 47 seats out of 75. The strength of the Congress was reduced to a mere 11 seats, greatly diminishing its hitherto fabricated larger-than-life presence in J & K. The political ideology of the Jamaat-i-Islami was unable to importune the electorate and secured just 1 seat.
The fairness of the 1977 election has been highlighted by many political analysts: it offset the preposterous elections held in J & K between 1951 and 1972. Democratic elections, the installation of a representative government and the forging of a political space that accommodated multiple ideologies contributed to the creation of a non-repressive, relatively stable political atmosphere.
During the 1987 elections, the National Conference (NC) was opposed by an unwieldy coalition of non-mainstream, anti-establishment groups, calling itself the Muslim United Front (MUF). It was a conglomerate that lacked structure and a unifying political ideology. However, as the newsmagazine India Today (31 March 1987: 26) observed during the campaign, the emergence of the MUF indicated that “the Valley is sharply divided between the party machine that brings out the traditional vote for the NC, and hundreds of thousands who have entered politics as participants for the first time under the umbrella provided by the MUF.” As I mentioned above, the MUF comprised several political organizations. Its main component was the Jamaat-i-Islami, chaired by Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Despite having participated in the 1972, 1977 and 1983 elections, and as part of the MUF conglomerate in the 1987 elections, the Jamaat had been unable to make a mark on the political matrix of J & K. It had, however, succeeded in making an impact in madrassas, which Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah had attempted to quell by closing down during his tenure as head of government.
Gender Politics and the Jamaat:
A couple of years ago, I reviewed Amina Jamal’s book Jamaat-e-Islami Women in Pakistan: Vanguard of a New Modernity for Book Review. Amina Jamal’s book is a much needed and scholarly look at the constructions as well as circumscriptions of “the Islamist project for women in contemporary Pakistan”.
After painstakingly delving into attempted reconstructions of gender identities by the Jammat, Amina Jamal observes that, “We may contend that the defeat of Islamic parties in provincial and national elections, as in February 2008, marks a frustration of ordinary Pakistanis, if not with the religious impulse of Islamist movements then certainly against their hegemonic impulse”. I would substantiate that contention by bringing in a pertinent point about conservative gender politics. Dan Smith (2001) Director of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, observes that, “people who make essentialist generalizations about women’s roles are usually unable not just to explain but even to acknowledge the diversity of women’s experiences and abilities”. The espousal of essentialist politics does not allow for change that would enable “peaceful conflict resolution, reconciliation between traditional enemies, justice between different races and gender equality”.
I would argue that politico-religious organizations like the Jamaat and vigilante organizations affiliated with it advocate the creation of a homogeneous culture devoid of the freedoms that South Asian Muslim women have traditionally enjoyed. Their draconian methods to enforce the purdah, even in Kashmir, reinforce a patriarchal structure in which an unaccompanied woman is rendered vulnerable, and curtail the mobility of the technology-savvy youth in an attempt to arabize the syncretic ethos of South Asia.
Conclusion
We require constructive critiques of the inability of the Jamaat to practice of politics of accommodation and negotiation. It is important for these organizations, including the Jammt-e-Islami to pave the way for clear nation-building programs, which would involve reviving civil society, resuscitating the shattered economy, providing sources of income, and building social and political structures.
Nyla Ali Khan is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of TransnationalismIslam, Women, and Violence in KashmirThe Life of a Kashmiri Woman, and the editor of The Parchment of Kashmir. Nyla Ali Khan has also served as an guest editor working on articles from the Jammu and Kashmir region for Oxford University Press (New York), helping to identify, commission, and review articles. She can be reached at nylakhan@aol.com.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/31/defeat-of-religious-parties-in-electoral-politics-in-south-asia/

A Wicked Witch and Winged Monkeys…Not From Oz


by 



Does anyone remember “The Wizard of Oz”? Recent news made me recall its song  line:
Ding-dong the witch is dead. Which old witch, the wicked witch, the wicked witch is dead”.
This “Wicked Witch of the East” is still alive. German law has no death penalty; she was sentenced to life in prison. While her appeal has little chance of success, the law permits those with life sentences to apply for parole after 15 years, often with success. But her murderous career is ended.
The trial in Munich of Beate Zschäpe and four minor accomplices lasted five full years! Many breathed a sigh of relief on hearing the verdict against this evil woman, who appeared in court every day, carefully coiffed and attired, with a mysterious smile and almost total refusal to say anything.
Beginning in 2000 she assisted two male friends in killing ten men in cities all over Germany. Mostly small shopkeepers, their only connection was their immigrant background, Turkish, in one case Greek. The killers also robbed banks, killed a German policewoman and set off an explosion in a Turkish-German neighborhood, wounding many. Their motive was to spread hatred; their cause, the National Socialist Underground, from the lying title Hitler chose for his party, in other words – fascism. In 2011 the two male killers allegedly shot themselves, or each other, in a single moment, and set fire to the mobile home they had rented, while Zschäpe set fire to their joint apartment.
Many unsolved mysteries remain. How did the local police chief immediately know the identity of the two dead men? Why had he inquired about them with the German FBI-equivalent just a day earlier – or was it the same day? Why were the two cops who immediately arrived at the scene so vague and contradictory about everything else, like their chief, but insistent that no-one else could have been involved – and escaped? Why was the vehicle, only partially burned and still unchecked for clues, towed away bumpily to a garage, making any proper search of the death site impossible?
The questions piled up. Why, after each murder, all in different states, did the police reject the idea that hatred of foreigners might be involved, encourage suspicion of the victims’ families and, when intimidating searches produced nothing but distress, push the idea that some “Turkish Mafia” must be involved, thus hindering genuine searches which might have prevented the next tragedies?
And why was a government agent, one of many active participants in fascist movements they are spying on, right in the internet café of one victim when he was shot, and leave without hearing, seeing or knowing about the murder or the corpse he must have passed? Why was he protected from inquiries? Why did the Interior Minister of Hesse, where the killing took place, stubbornly reject being questioned about his agent – and hinder scrutiny of the relevant documents, which are now locked away from public (or legal) view for an amazing 120 years? (No, that number is not a typo!).
And why is the same man now Minister President of the state of Hesse and a powerful figure in the party of Angela Merkel, who promised a full examination of the case five years ago!
+++++
As in the Land of Oz, there seem to be swarms of “Winged Monkeys” flying around, not subservient to any Wicked Witch of the West but “obedient to anyone wearing the Golden Cap, pure gold with a circle of sparkling diamonds and red rubies running round it… Whoever owned it could call upon the Winged Monkeys, who would obey any order they were given, no matter how evil or silly”.
For author Frank Baum in 1900, that was certainly a metaphor. It is for me too! In my metaphor, wild creatures are also flying around, not just in Hesse. I see two sub-species: one, for me especially frightening, is looking for trouble in the world, seeking confrontation, even conflict, condemning dialogue as “treason” and pushing hatred of an “adversary” stupid enough to use a crazy alphabet and strangely fervent in opposing a threatening military power, at least ten or fifteen times its own strength, which regularly flexes its muscles – tanks and war planes – in maneuvers perilously close to its most vital borders.
And the other sub-species? The racist, secret groups like the National Socialist Union, now perhaps defunct, an openly fascist assortment of violent, booted, swastika-tattooed thugs, but also well-dressed citizens, welcome guests on talk shows and now holding 92 AfD  seats in the Bundestag but also to be found in the two “Christian” parties and elsewhere. They are the ones who preach hatred, sometimes against Jews again but most commonly now against Muslims, “Islamists”, immigrants or anyone they can label as a foreigner.
In their spirit a racist tornado hit Germany recently, like the Kansas twister which sent Dorothy spinning to Oz. The spinning in this case was with soccer balls. This game, called football here, is a constant topic, though for some the skilled kicking seems to get less attention than: Who’s playing whom! Hurrah for the home team! This is fairly normal, but it becomes highly emotional when the national team aims at another victory trophy, like last month in Russia. German fans, sure of victories like in Rio in 2014, jammed the broad avenue cutting through the central park (Tiergarten) as 100,000 or so watched the giant screens waiting to cheer every German advance. A real carnival!
But alas, this time the magic was missing, in three games the team failed to even make the quarter finals. Bitter tragedy – and that carnival mile stayed almost empty! Top-notch world football or not, who wanted to watch England, France or Croatia if no Germans were playing?
The anger at this national tragedy quickly found a scapegoat: Mesut Özil, one of the best players, who played well in all three games but not well enough to turn the tide.   
In addition, he had made a blunder. Several weeks before the games he and another team player with Turkish background, born like him in Germany, had appeared on TV in England in a smiling exchange with Erdogan, the president of Turkey, shortly before the election there. Erdogan was gunning for all those in Europe with Turkish roots who can still vote in Turkish elections, especially in Germany, where many have double citizenship. For the two possibly unpolitical athletes, they were flattered, and wanted to make clear that, although German, they were not ashamed of their Turkish roots and felt attached to the country of their parents and grandparents. Whatever the reason, it was politically a stupid mistake.
But that did not justify the vicious campaign unleashed against Özil after the team flop.  Although he was second in the number of shots at the goal, and perhaps second-best player in the lost games, the media-inspired boos of the fans were directed against him. Media analyses of the lost games almost always featured him in the middle, like one headlined “German Downfall”. An anti-foreigner tone was obvious; one paper spoke of 23 team members and two Turks; condescension ranging to hatred dripped from the pages, the TV voices, the social media. When top football officials, instead of defending him, joined in the attack, Özil broke a long silence with a statement, in English, that he is quitting the national team (both Turkish Germans, like other players, have season contracts in England or elsewhere.) He asserted: when the team wins he is “a good German player”. When it loses he becomes “the Turkish-German player” or “the Turk” and takes the blame.
This issue split the fans, also non-fans, and aroused new disputes about discrimination, revealing often ignored racist views. In response, some with a Turkish background are re-considering their decision to dismiss their past and become Germans. Too often they are met by intolerance – and also murder!
With militarism and race hatred, as with animals generally, similar sub-species can mate.
Leading the anti-foreigner mob (though not anti-Russian), is the “Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, now competing with the Social Democrats in the polls, with the AfD nationally teetering between 13 and 17%, while the SPD has dropped to 17-19%. The AfD may soon win second place!
++++
I close with an item from Leipzig, the industrial center of Saxony, where the AfD is strongest. That meant nothing in the fight at a big iron foundry. In GDR days it was the pride of the region, successful enough in the 1980’s to commission a Japanese company to add an ultra-modern automated section. The number working here varied between 6000 or more…
After the demise of the GDR and almost all its industry, this foundry held out, almost alone, saving jobs for 700 employees. After various typical buy-outs and sell-outs, with a French, then a Dutch owner, it landed in the arms of a Bosnian billionaire with a firm called Prevent. A speculator, he tried to charge Volkswagen and Opel higher prices for the well-made motor blocks and drive shafts. But they proved stronger, punished him, and he planned bankruptcy for next year, meaning joblessness and only a few cents in severance pay for the 700 in Leipzig and 1300 in western Saarbrucken.
The workers’ answer – all 2000 – was to go on strike. Locomotive engineers have dared that in recent years, also kindergarten teachers, airline personnel, post office workers, hospital staff, with varying success. But East German factory workers, with bitter joblessness staring them in the face, have rarely risked a strike. Of course the media called their step “hopeless”, “counterproductive”, “stupid”. Other VW and Opel suppliers cursed them for causing difficulties. But the 2000, in East and West, held out together. They organized well, came to strike posts each day and did their best to keep scabs from entering and products from leaving.
They resisted all arguments and pleas, until last Monday, after six weeks, the company finally agreed on arbitration, with an arbitrator chosen by the union. The workers agreed to stop the strike – or to interrupt it. They want to see the results of the arbitration – and then vote on it.
Even little victories are rare in the East German industrial landscape. But it is always worthwhile to oppose evil witches and even defy autocrats wearing golden caps full of diamonds and rubies.
Victor Grossman writes the Berlin Bulletin, which you can subscribe to for free by sending an email to: wechsler_grossman@yahoo.de.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/31/a-wicked-witch-and-winged-monkeys-not-from-oz/

Will Tribalism Trump Democracy?

 BlogviewPat Buchanan Archive 

On July 19, the Knesset voted to change the nation’s Basic Law.
Israel was declared to be, now and forever, the nation-state and national home of the Jewish people. Hebrew is to be the state language.
Angry reactions, not only among Israeli Arabs and Jews, came swift.
Allan Brownfeld of the American Council for Judaism calls the law a “retreat from democracy” as it restricts the right of self-determination, once envisioned to include all within Israel’s borders, to the Jewish people. Inequality is enshrined.
And Israel, says Brownfeld, is not the nation-state of American Jews.
What makes this clash of significance is that it is another battle in the clash that might fairly be called the issue of our age.
The struggle is between the claims of tribe, ethnicity, peoples and nations, against the commands of liberal democracy.
In Europe, the Polish people seek to preserve the historic and ethnic character of their country with reforms that the EU claims violate Poland’s commitment to democracy.
If Warsaw persists, warns the EU, the Poles will be punished. But which comes first: Poland, or its political system, if the two are in conflict?
Other nations are ignoring the open-borders requirements of the EU’s Schengen Agreement, as they attempt to block migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
They want to remain who they are, open borders be damned.
Britain is negotiating an exit from the EU because the English voted for independence from that transitional institution whose orders they saw as imperiling their sovereignty and altering their identity.
When Ukraine, in the early 1990s, was considering secession from Russia, Bush I warned Kiev against such “suicidal nationalism.”
Ukraine ignored President Bush. Today, new questions have arisen.
If Ukrainians had a right to secede from Russia and create a nation-state to preserve their national identity, do not the Russians in Crimea and the Donbass have the same right — to secede from Ukraine and rejoin their kinsmen in Russia?
As Georgia seceded from Russia at the same time, why do not the people of South Ossetia have the same right to secede from Georgia?
Who are we Americans, 5,000 miles away, to tell tribes, peoples and embryonic nations of Europe whether they may form new states to reflect and preserve their national identity?
Nor are these minor matters.
At Paris in 1919, Sudeten Germans and Danzig Germans were, against their will, put under Czech and Polish rule. British and French resistance to permitting these peoples to secede and rejoin their kinfolk in 1938 and 1939 set the stage for the greatest war in history.
Here in America, we, too, appear to be in an endless quarrel about who we are.
Is America a different kind of nation, a propositional nation, an ideological nation, defined by a common consent to the ideas and ideals of our iconic documents like the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address?
Or are we like other nations, a unique people with our own history, heroes, holidays, religion, language, literature, art, music, customs and culture, recognizable all over the world as “the Americans”?
Since 2001, those who have argued that we Americans were given, at the birth of the republic, a providential mission to democratize mankind, have suffered an unbroken series of setbacks.
Nations we invaded, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, to bestow upon them the blessings of democracy, rose up in resistance. What our compulsive interventionists saw as our mission to mankind, the beneficiaries saw as American imperialism.
And the culture wars on history and memory continue unabated.
According to The New York Times, the African-American candidate for governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, has promised to sandblast the sculptures of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis off Stone Mountain.
The Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, has a pickup truck, which he promises to use to transfer illegal migrants out of Georgia and back to the border.
In Texas, a move is afoot to remove the name of Stephen Austin from the capital city, as Austin, in the early 1830s, resisted Mexico’s demands to end slavery in Texas when it was still part of Mexico.
One wonders when they will get around to Sam Houston, hero of Texas’ War of Independence and first governor of the Republic of Texas, which became the second slave republic in North America.
Houston, after whom the nation’s fourth-largest city is named, was himself, though a Unionist, a slave owner and an opponent of abolition.
Today, a large share of the American people loathe who we were from the time of the explorers and settlers, up until the end of segregation in the 1960s. They want to apologize for our past, rewrite our history, erase our memories and eradicate the monuments of those centuries.
The attacks upon the country we were and the people whence we came are near constant.
And if we cannot live together amicably, secession from one another, personally, politically, and even territorially, seems the ultimate alternative.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”
Coyright 2018 Creators.com.
http://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/will-tribalism-trump-democracy/