“An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think.”
— German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Hegel is spot-on the interrelationship of thinking and generalising. We all think about various things in our daily lives. Out from our observations and experiences, we also draw some general conclusions or generalise that is more of an evaluative process.
We also meet people who hold an opinion or view to be only a ‘generalisation’; therefore, by calling it a generalisation what they imply is that it should be cast aside as ‘non-factual’ or ‘illusory’. However, that’s a simplistic view. On the contrary, in the hands of thinkers and critical observers, their views are based on empirical data and a rational analysis of such data. As a result, for them to offer generalisations is an essential part of communicating some facts that are part of a cognitive process. Thus by generalising, a specific instance is extended to cover a wider range of similar cases.
No wonder, all thinkers and mentally mature people generalise. That helps us to see their views as sound and verifiable. But all generalisations do not meet this criterion. By adducing evidence, we can show the erroneous assumptions on which such generalised views may be based.
For instance, we have seen that whenever the US rulers have invaded any country, they have killed very many innocent people and caused much damage as they did in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. etc. From these instances, we as observers of international events conclude that US militarism is dangerous and murderous. That is our generalisation about the US militarists. But if they stop doing what they have been doing for so long, we may change our generalised view about them. However, the prospects of any such change in American policies seem remote.
–– Nasir Khan In the following article, Indian author A.G. Noorani gives a brief account of the politics of Hindutva in India. Many people are not aware that Hindutva is not the same as Hinduism. Hinduism is an ancient religion that evolved in India, but Hindutva is an extremist religious-nationalist ideology that is opposed to the idea of a democratic India, based upon the principle of secularism, equality of all its citizens, irrespective of their religion, creed and caste. Hindutva rejects the ideas of such equality of all its citizens but, instead, aims at transforming India into a Hindu polity – Hindu Rashtra – where only Hindus will be supreme. In such a state, 200 million Muslims and 30 million Christians will be made second-class citizens. Hindutva as an extremist nationalist ideology uses the cover of Hinduism to justify atrocities against Muslims, Christians and Dalits. It founders and mentors have copied and developed further the authoritarian and military model of fascism that was practised by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Since 2014, the BJP government had power in India under the premiership of Narendra Modi, who has the notorious record of being an ardent anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan leader for decades. After BJP’s sweeping electoral success in May last year, the Modi regime started implementing the political programme of Hindutva fascists. After imposing direct Indian rule over Jammu and Kashmir, his party led the terrorist campaign against Muslims in Delhi, where Hindu militants and gangsters plundered the shops owned by Muslims and then torched their homes and properties. They killed over 50 Muslims in Delhi alone. All this took place under PM Modi’s nose. That was Hindutva in action. —https://clarionindia.net/why-we-need-to-know-and-understand-hindutva-a-g-noorani/?fbclid=IwAR3HLAIPe06LGva0ommYBAKFbRcH_JLpw1miggd9JAUZU6LPNAK0Npk30yo
Why We Need to Know and Understand Hindutva – A G Noorani
Members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh take part in the daily morning drill.
Hindutva is the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The election manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party — the party in power and political front of the RSS — has sworn by it since 1996. What is more, Hindutva provides ample warning for what is in store for the future of India’s democracy and secularism. It splits the nation into ‘us’ and ‘them’, and discards Indian nationalism in favor of Hindu nationalism
A G NOORANI
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]INDUTVA sums up the ideology that moved champions of Hindu nationalism for decades before Partition. In 1923, V.D. Savarkar coined the term in his essay, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? As an atheist, he took pains to emphasize that Hindutva was not synonymous with Hinduism. It is important to understand the term, in all its nuances, because of its past and present significance.
Hindutva is the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The election manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party — the party in power and political front of the RSS — has sworn by it since 1996. What is more, Hindutva provides ample warning for what is in store for the future of India’s democracy and secularism. It splits the nation into ‘us’ and ‘them’, and discards Indian nationalism in favor of Hindu nationalism.
Savarkar wrote, “… Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By an ‘ism’ it is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious dogma or system. But when we attempt to investigate the essential significance of Hindutva we do not primarily — and certainly not mainly — concern ourselves with any particular theocratic or religious dogma or creed”. His concern was politics; the political mobilization of Hindus into one nation.
If not religion, what, then, is the basis for the divide? With crystal clarity, he wrote, “To every Hindu … this Sindhusthan is at once a pitribhu and a punyabhu — fatherland and a holy land. That is why in the case of some of our … countrymen, who had originally been forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who consequently have inherited along with Hindus, a common fatherland and a greater part of the wealth of a common culture — language, law, customs, folklore and history — are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus.
For though Hindusthan to them is fatherland as to any other Hindu yet it is not to them a holy land too. Their holy land is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and god-men, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their name and their outlook smack of a foreign origin”.
Modern hatreds are supported by ancient (real or not) wrongs.
The divide cannot be bridged except by obeying Hindutva’s demand for conversion to Hinduism. Savarkar exhorted, “Ye, who by race, by blood, by culture, by nationality possess almost all the essentials of Hindutva and had been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by the hand of violence — ye, have only to render wholehearted love to our common mother and recognise her not only as fatherland (Pitribhu) but even as a holy land (Punyabhu), and ye would be most welcome to the Hindu fold”.
Gandhi’s assassination put paid to Savarkar’s ambitions, but the RSS picked up the baton. Its supremo, M S Golwalkar, drew inspiration from Hindutva and coined its synonym, ‘cultural nationalism’, in contrast to ‘territorial nationalism’ in his book, A Bunch of Thoughts (1968). Everyone born within the territory of India is not a nationalist; the nation is defined by a common ‘culture’ (read: religion).
Golwalkar wrote, “… here was already a full-fledged ancient nation of the Hindus and the various communities which were living in the country were here either as guests, the Jews and Parsis, or as invaders, the Muslims and Christians. They never faced the question how all such heterogeneous groups could be called as children of the soil merely because, by an accident, they happened to reside in common territory under the rule of a common enemy … The theories of territorial nationalism and of common danger, which formed the basis for our concept of nation, had deprived us of the positive and inspiring content of our real Hindu nationhood …”
This explains the RSS’ ghar wapsi (‘return to your home’) campaign, simply a repeat of the past shuddhi (‘purification’) movement. Nothing has changed; an unbroken ideological thread binds Savarkar’s Hindutva, Golwalkar’s ‘cultural nationalism’ and the RSS-BJP policies today. On Sept 24, 1990, BJP president L K Advani launched “a crusade in defense of Hindutva”, which culminated in the demolition of Babri Masjid, in his presence, on Dec 6, 1992.
Since 1996, the BJP’s election manifestos for Lok Sabha elections pledge to espouse Hindutva in these terms: “The cultural nationalism of India … is the core of Hindutva.” This explains the Modi government’s systematic purge of educational and cultural institutions. It is a quarrel with history. As scholars Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph remarked, modern hatreds are supported by ancient, remembered wrongs, whether real or imagined. The RSS-BJP combine rejects the concept of composite culture that Jawaharlal Nehru and others propounded.–Courtesy Dawn
Pakistani physicist Dr. Hoodbhoy’s dismissal proves once again that there is no place for any enlightened academic or scientist in Pakistan who does not follow the official line of the horrid ignorance that is imposed in the name of Islam. The Islamist right-wingers have the final say what is to be taught in the educational institutions. Thus ignorant people have a decisive voice in shaping the educational policies of the educational institutions. They decide what a teacher of science or other subjects should say and not say.
We have heard and witnessed over the decades that Pakistani ruling elites and exploiters of Islam proclaiming time and again that in Pakistan everything taught should be according to the teachings of the Quran. But the irony is that these people even don’t know this basic fact that the Quran is a sacred book of Muslims, not a guide or manual on physics, chemistry, geology, history, geography or cosmology, etc.
File photo of Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy. Attila Kisbenedek—AFP
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy’s dismissal from Lahore’s FCC University is a win for irrationality
Professor Dr. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, currently teaching physics and math at Lahore’s Forman Christian College University, has been informed that his contract will not be renewed in 2021. The same week, Punjab Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar announced that all universities of the province would be required to teach the holy Quran as a compulsory subject, with students allowed to graduate only after the course has been completed.
Hoodbhoy, born in 1950, is a Ph.D. in nuclear physics; he objects to acts of state and society against reason. His book Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality explains the source of his trouble with the ideological state of Pakistan. It is not that he hates religion; he objects to acts of irrationality in the name of religion. The two scientists he most admires, Ramanujan and Abdus Salam, were deeply religious.
He protested, however, when Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s own police guard murdered the politician after Taseer defended a Christian woman accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet under Pakistan’s draconian anti-blasphemy law. Having lived under General Ziaul Haq’s Islamic martial law, he was put off by a 1987 conference on “scientific miracles” in which Muslim scientists mixed religious miracle with scientific discovery. Pakistani scientists, encouraged by a funding of Rs. 6,600,000 (half provided by Saudi Arabia), flew off the handle and talked rubbish about science and demeaned the divine writ of the Quran.
Pakistan’s chief scientist, Salim Mehmud, tried to give himself a leg-up by making a hash of the theory of relativity after linking it with the “mairaj” (ascension) of Islam’s Prophet. Another scientist, lucratively employed at The Holy Quran Research Foundation, proposed that taming “jinns could solve the country’s energy-related problems” as the creatures are made of fire. Many others, lured by the limelight, delivered of themselves gems of medieval gibberish in the name of Islamic science.
Hoodbhoy has examined the roots of these ridiculous attitudes among Muslim scientists and come up with a well-researched book about the maltreatment of the scientific principle in Muslim societies. He asked Nobel Prize laureate Abdus Salam to write its preface because the professor had already made a plaintive appeal to the Muslim world to spend money on scientific advancement instead of “conquering” science through dogma.
Hoodbhoy tells us that scientific facts are contingent on reality. They are empirically proven but subject to change upon further discovery. In his view, it is wrong to link the eternal truth of Islam to this evolving understanding of natural phenomena. Science relies on observation and logic whose predictability is not destroyed by the new understanding of quantum physics. For a believer, it is important to separate divine knowledge from empirical fact, but this separation should not impinge on the ferocious Islamic polemic against secularism.
Science in Islam was destroyed because it was never applied enough to involve the common man. Kings often employed scientists, but they were at times killed after the death of their patron. Al-Kindi was lashed 50 times in front of an illiterate approving crowd; Al-Razi was hit on the head with his own book on rationalism till he lost his eyesight; Ibn Sina’s entire life was spent running away from one prince after the other for fear of being killed for heresy; Ibn Khaldun, the great social scientist discovered by the West, was condemned by Taha Hussain as a non-believer pretending to be a Muslim.
In his book, Hoodbhoy quotes Syed Ameer Ali on Islamic thinkers who thought the scientific method anti-Islamic: Al-Ashari, Ibn Hanbal, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya. He examines the case made by leading Asharite Imam Ghazali against the study of logic and mathematics and thinks that this was to become the greatest intellectual hurdle against the learning of science. He criticizes contemporary Islamic scholar Hussein Nasr for blaming the sciences for the misdirection of the Muslim mind. His critique of Ziauddin Sardar for introducing the polemic of secularism into the sciences is balanced and fair.
Hoodbhoy steps beyond the pale of anti-scientism in today’s new intellectual trend when he gives statistics about the poverty of science learning in the Muslim world. The gap between India and Pakistan is significant because it goes beyond the argument of population ratios. One has to helplessly concede that where Muslims control societies, the one branch of knowledge that becomes neglected is the sciences. Prof Salam’s advocacy of the pure sciences becomes meaningful when one realizes that professional disciplines far outstrip the disciplines that teach science.
Hoodbhoy is not the only dissenting voice to have been dismissed from the echelons of academia in recent weeks. Author Mohammad Hanif posted on Twitter that he, too, had been let go from Karachi’s Habib University. Similarly, Prof. Ammar Ali Jan, also affiliated with FCCU, has also claimed on the social network that he had been released as visiting faculty over his public activism that was making the varsity “controversial.”
Pervez Hoodbhoy’s book has diagnosed what is happening to the Muslim mind toward the end of the 20th century. This mind is not only producing strange reactions to the sciences in general; it is also trying to tackle the question of governance without separating the state from religious belief. The new coercive order spreading over Muslim society is not political but intellectual. The tragic fact however is that this experiment is too late in the day and quite redundant in the light of what the institution of the state has gone through in Islam’s own history and in other civilizations.
Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”
Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.
Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war. From January 2003 onwards, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.” As the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings.
But when he was president, Bush acted as if the United States were entitled to intervene in any foreign election he pleased. He boasted in 2005 that his administration had budgeted almost $5 billion “for programs to support democratic change around the world,” much of which was spent on tampering with foreign vote totals. When Iraq held elections in 2005, Bush approved a massive covert aid program for pro-American Iraqi parties. The Bush administration spent over $65 million to boost their favored candidate in the 2004 Ukraine election. Yet, with boundless hypocrisy, Bush proclaimed that “any (Ukrainian) election…ought to be free from any foreign influence.” US government-financed organizations helped spur coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. Both of those nations, along with Ukraine, remain political train wrecks.
In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.” But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a terrorist suspect. In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush that the president was entitled to violate the law during wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In 2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights.
Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture—one of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects.
Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money. Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in homeownership.” In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining example of “compassionate conservatism.”
Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households. “The implosion of the subprime lending market has left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge.
It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed, “Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all” is rubbish. Author:
James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.
In his poems and articles, Badri Raina often reflects upon the social and political conditions in his native land, India. He knows how Hinduva’s fascist nationalists have hijacked the secular direction of the Indian polity which accorded full recognition to ethnoreligious diversity of the state after the end of the British colonial rule in 1947.
Many left-wing people also became convinced that India’s constitution will protect the minorities of India under an independent judiciary. But such hopes were shattered when the Hindutva emerged as a dominating force that had broad support in the Hindu population.
Badri Raina’s new poem is a reflection of his long-held views and struggles. However, the ideas he advances in this poem are also applicable to many countries where morbid rightists use the cover of religion and populist demagoguery to further their sectarian objectives.
Keir Starmer is playing political games to gain electoral support from the large British Indian community to further his political career. To this end, he has chosen to side with the ultra-rightist Hindutva regime of PM Modi.
On 5 August 2019, Modi set aside the constitutional guarantees of the semi-autonomous status to the State of Jammu & Kashmir which the Indian rulers had given to this state after the Partition of India in 1947. When Modi’s PJP won a large electoral majority in the Indian national elections in May last year, he set in motion a total blockade of Jammu & Kashmir to impose direct Indian rule there. That was in flagrant violations of the eh UN resolutions and also the guarantees that Indian rulers had given to Kashmiris in 1947.
However, the people of Kashmir never compromised their demands and their national right to self-determination. Their movement for freedom from the Indian rule became an open revolt in 1989. Since then, Inda has done all to crush by its military power the freedom movement of the people of Kashmir, who are mostly Muslims. Indian army has killed over one hundred thousand Kashmiris.
At a time, when the colonised people of Kashmir need the support and solidarity of all freedom-loving people, trade unions and labour organizations, the direction taken by Keir Starmer is the opposite of what a Labour leader should have done. The steps taken by the British Muslims are fair and must be a reminder to this Labour leader that his policy to appease the Hindu voters is downright opportunistic and degrading. He is pushing the Labour Party in a direction that will make it look like an extended arm of Isareli Zionists and Hindutva fascists.
Ordinary working-class people have been the backbone of the Labour Party. We who have stood by the Labour Party, as I have done for over half-a-century, are deeply anguished to see Keir Starmer turning a blind eye to what the ordinary members of the Labour Party have stood for. It is high time that such people raise their voice collectively and also stand with people who oppose Starmer’s political overtures to the brutal oppressors of Kashmir and also Palestine.
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Over 100 mosques threaten to boycott Labour over Kashmir
Over 100 British mosques and Islamic centres have signed a letter to Labour leader Keir Starmer saying they would support a call for Muslims to abstain from voting for Labour unless it supports Kashmir’s right to self-determination.
The letter came after Starmer described the Kashmir dispute as a “bilateral issue” between India and Pakistan after a meeting with an Indian lobby group at the end of last month.
Starmer’s comments caused outrage among Muslims and eventually led to several Labour Muslim MPs reiterating their support for Kashmiri rights.
The Labour leader has since said that the party’s position on Kashmir has not changed and that it recognises previous UN resolutions on the rights of the Kashmiri people.
Here is the letter from the mosques in full:
We, the undersigned members of the Muslim community living in the UK (many of whom have families in South Asia), are writing to express our utter shock at the contents of your letter in which you clearly express unflinching support for the Indian Government’s position on Kashmir.
This, at a time when the very same Indian Government is engaging in anti-Muslim rhetoric and failing to protect the Indian Muslim community from populist violence, and enacting laws that will potentially render 40 million Muslim citizens in India stateless, which as you well know contravenes international law.
Muslim coronavirus patients are being turned away from hospitals. Kashmir itself has been in lockdown for more than eight months now. India, under the premiership of Narendra Modi, is stepping away from being one of the world’s largest democracies and hurtling instead towards becoming a fascist-led authoritarian state where minorities, Muslims and others, no longer feel safe or protected. It is the members of this very same hate-fuelled ideology who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.
We wish to remind you that Kashmir is not a bilateral issue, evidenced by the 11 UN Security Council Resolutions which declare Kashmir a disputed territory and that the people of Kashmir have the right to self-determination, something which was enshrined in India’s constitution under Article 370. The meeting at the Security Council last year on 16th August 2019 is further evidence that this is not just a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.
It is one of the world’s oldest unresolved territorial conflicts that has the potential to lead India and Pakistan into a devastating nuclear war which would have global repercussions. You have not only completely disregarded the international element of the conflict but have also pointedly ignored the Labour Party’s own resolution, voted in at the 2019 conference, which states:
“[We] accept that Kashmir is a disputed territory and the people of Kashmir should be given the right to self-determination in accordance with UN resolutions. The Labour Party to stand with the Kashmiri people fighting against occupation, this is vital as we stand for social justice and ethical foreign policy.”
It would seem to us that holding foreign governments to account over their discriminatory policies and human rights abuses does not seem to be a foreign policy goal under your leadership. As a former barrister, you will clearly be aware of the seriousness of India’s violation of UN resolutions. In addition, you, as the new leader of the Labour Party ought to shoulder greater responsibility on this issue given that the partition which led to this conflict was overseen by a Labour government at the time.
Indian occupation forces in Kashmir
It seems to us that there is an ingrained view that the British Muslim vote has and always will be a secure one for the Labour Party, to be taken for granted with little consideration of the issues and concerns which matter to us as British Muslim communities. In view of the concerns raised above, we strongly urge you to reconsider the party’s position.
We hereby state in no uncertain terms that should you fail to modify your position on the issue of Kashmir and by extension, the plight and oppression of the large Indian Muslim minority within India, then we will consider the Labour Party to have simply taken advantage of the Muslim community.
We will, therefore, have no option but to support a call for the Muslim community to abstain from voting for Labour at all upcoming elections. We hope that this will not be necessary and that the Labour Party will continue to stand against human rights abuses wherever they may be. We urge you not to underestimate the strength of our feeling on this issue.
Yours sincerely,
Federation of Redbridge Muslim Organisations (FORMO) – 17 organisations Hazrat Sultan Bahu Trust – 22 centres Indian Muslim Federation UK Muslim Association of Kent – 20 organisations South East London & Kent Council of Mosques (SELKOM) – 7 organisations Waltham Forest Council of Mosques (WFCOM) – 9 organisations Al-Hira Masjid Newham Academy of Inspiration Al Ansar Masjid Al-Emaan Centre (Keston Mosque) Al Madina Mosque Barking Al Noor Foundation Anjuman-e-Islamia Newham Apex Trust Association of Muslim Lawyers Attiq Malik on behalf of Liberty Law Barking Muslim Social and Cultural Society Brent Central Mosque BWA Muslim Cultural Centre (New Cross Mosque) Chingford Islamic Society Gardens of Peace Muslim Cemetery Faizan-e-Islam Finsbury Park Mosque Ghosia Masjid WFIA (Lea Bridge Road Mosque) Great Barr Muslim Foundation Birmingham Harrow Central Mosque Hounslow Jamia Masjid IG-Soc (“Connecting Muslims in Redbridge”) Ilford Islamic Centre (Albert Road) Ilford Muslim Society (Balfour Road) International Business and Professional Corporation, Redbridge Jamia Masjid and Islamic Centre (JMIC) Stoke Poges Lane Masjid Kent Muslim Welfare Association (Gillingham Mosque) Lewisham Islamic Centre Leyton Jamia Masjid MCT Leytonstone Masjid Majlis-e-Ulama-e-Shia-Europe Masjid Abu Bakr Masjid Al Humera Newham Masjid-e-Owais-e-Qarni (Belgrave Road) Masjid-e-Quba Newham Masjid-e-Tauheed Manor Park Masjid-e-Umer Masjid Falah Masjid Tawhid Muslimah Sports Association Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) Neasden Mosque & Islamic Centre Newbury Park Mosque Newham Community Project Newham North Islamic Association Noor-ul-Islam North West Kent Muslim Association (Crayford Mosque) Pakistan Welfare Association (PWA) Slough Qur’ani Murkuz Trust (South Woodford Mosque) Redbridge Islamic Centre (Redbridge and Gants Hill) Redbridge Talks Seven Kings Muslim Educational Trust Shirley Muslim Association Sri Lankan Diaspora UK Tehreek-e-Kashmir UK, London The Mosque & Islamic Centre of Brent Ujala Foundation Slough UKIM Masjid Ibrahim and Islamic Centre Newham
Mirza Ghalib (1797 – 1869) and Mohammad Iqbal (1877 – 1938) are two great poets in their own ways. Iqbal is also a politician, a populist, an ideologue of Islam where he expounds Islam along mystical and unclear paths (his ‘Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’ being a clear expression of his confused thinking and lack of clarity despite his pedantic English that only few can understand or digest!). But his command of Urdu and Farsi in conveying his poetic message and ideas is impressive.
His poetry covers many areas and it can’t be labelled under any one theme. His revolutionary and progressive ideas are appreciable but his tilt towards religiosity, mysticism and Islamic nationalism in the latter part of his life was a big waste of the intellect of a good man. The Pakistani reactionary political establishment took full advantage of his shoddy Islamist ideology and transformed him into a mullah which he was not!
In contrast to Iqbal, Ghalib was only a poet and not a politician or messenger of any political revolution. In his verse, he conveyed his sublime ideas in a way unmatched in this language. His word has enriched the Urdu language by his poetic expression and his style of prose (see his letters). If we can extend the area of philosophy to general wisdom, deeper insights in human psychology and human condition then Ghalib stands far higher than Iqbal in such areas. He is a universalist, not bound by faith, creed or ideological nihilism as Iqbal seems to be. Iqbal’s origin as a Kashmiri Pandit, which, no doubt, I feel happy about as a Kashmiri myself, but that is not decisive when I assess him. I end this piece with a verse of the immortal Ghalib:
Ham kahan ke danaa the, kis hunar main yakta the Be sababb hua Ghalib, dushman aasman apna
Mr. Woodward, I hope you don’t misunderstand me when I write this as a freethinking humanist. I know that religions have caused much bloodshed and misery in human history. But religions have no real content. It is the followers of a religion who give meaning or importance to what their religion is and what it is not.
Religions have been a powerful factor in human history which the rulers used for their political domination and the servility of their subjects. That role is still there and is used by present-day rulers as it suits them, except for the countries where State and Religion are separated.
The second point in this context I would like to make is that religion is an idea often based on some dogmas. Such dogmas become essential parts of a religion that people interpret and sometimes come up with varying interpretations, leading to inter-religious conflicts. Such things have been the cause of much blood-shedding in Christianity and Islam, etc. Anyone who has read the histories of these religions knows that.
Religion and its followers are not the same. That should be easy for us to see. For instance, a group of fanatic followers may misuse their religion. In fact, such things have happened in all recorded history. If they use it to justify the killing of other people for some reason by using the name and cover of religion, who can stop them? None, in my view.
Religion as a collection of ideas does not impose itself upon humans; humans do that. Vicious people will use it as they want. But humane and noble people who want to use their religion for doing some good work are also free to do that. Such conflicting uses of religion are not a secret. We have to understand that in this world there are believers of religions. As long as they do not leave their religions, no one should force them to do so.
In that case, my attitude towards these people is simply this: As long as they do not harm others and use their religions as their personal beliefs, then we should respect them. They are our fellow human beings and they use the freedom to choose and practise their religion. But as a humanist, I should not abuse and dehumanize them. Instead, we who are freethinking people should work systematically to bring information to these people in a manner that they don’t feel threatened. You know how people react when they feel their beliefs and valuable things in life are under threat. Before we can teach others, we have to learn ourselves to carry on our work.
The following brief account may help some curious readers about the Sunni-Shia divide in Islam that also affects political affairs in the Middle Eastern region. Remarks on the Sunni-Shia division in Islam — Nasir Khan The division of Islam into Shia and Sunni branches from the mid-seventh century was more due to the political factors than with the fundamentals of the faith because they were the same for all people including the power elites. Obviously, two rivals engaged in a struggle to gain the upper hand in a political race cannot win unless they strike some compromise and avoid the conflict. This was possible between rival claimants, Ali bin Abi Taleb and Muwaiya bin Abi Sufyan, but did not happen in the early phase of the growing polarization that was taking place in the Muslim community. One puritan group, the Kharijites, saw the developments with apprehension for the new faith and the Muslim community, which by now was large and was rapidly spreading in many regions of the world. The Kharijite solution to stem the tide of power-politics that was damaging the new nation was a radical one: liquidate the rival claimants to the Caliphate and save the faith and the Caliphate. Despite what they did, the problem did not vanish. Now the Sunni and Shia forms of thought about the office of the Caliph started to diverge. Afterward, even the theological differences started to grow. Inevitably, the Sunni and Shia doctrinal differences became more pronounced and the different schools of jurisprudence put their stamp on the growing disparity between the two groups. Therefore, what started as a political factor eventually developed into two rival sects within Islam. What sort of relationship emerged between the two branches when Islam became a world religion and Islamic Empire grew in size and power can be briefly put this way: The Sunni Islam became dominant but Shias were not victimized. The relationships were mostly cordial and one of toleration and mutual respect. The intolerance towards Shia and the victimization of Shias in countries like Pakistan in these times is a tragic story of a faith that has been hijacked by some fanatic ignorant people in the name of their brand of ‘puritan’ theology. But these criminals and assassins are a right-wing fringe element within Pakistan. The great majority of ordinary Sunni Muslims has nothing against Shia Muslims and vice versa. Both of them look upon each other as brothers and accept each other’s right to follow Islam according to their traditions and customs. But in Iraq under President G.W. Bush American invaders and occupiers of the land fanned the sectarian divide, resulting in the bloodshed of Iraqis. The suppression of the Shias in Saudi Arabia is also a manifestation of how the Wahabbi rulers impose their morbid religious cult in violation of the fundamental principle of the freedom of religion which is followed in the civilized world.
TEHRAN (FNA)- Nasir Khan, historian and peace activist, says Donald Trump, the US President, issued the assassination order of Lieutenant General Soleimani under the influence of Netanyahu’s allies working in his Administration.
In an exclusive interview with FNA, Nasir Khan said, “[Netanyahu] had people like Secretary of State Pompeo and former National Security Advisor Bolton doing their work for him.”
“Netanyahu has used all the ploys. He has played a key role in pushing Trump to unilaterally retreat from the international nuclear agreement with Iran, and has done all to influence Trump to attack Iran”, he added.
Nasir Khan, Ph.D. Philosophy, is a historian and political analyst. He has authored several books and written numerous articles on international politics, socialism, religion and human rights.
Below is the full text of the interview:
Q: How do you see Lieutenant General Soleimani’s role in the fight against Daesh, also known as ISIL or ISIS?
A: The emergence of Daesh was primarily due to the general instability caused by the US war of aggression on Iraq in 2003. The systemic destruction of Iraq, its army and infrastructure had created a complicated and confusing situation in and around Iraq. As a result, Daesh was able to expand in Iraq and Syria, where a disastrous civil war had started. The Syrian forces had lost large areas to Daesh.
General Soleimani as a bold military strategist played a pivotal role in defeating Daesh in Iraq and Syria. For instance, his role in breaking the siege of Amirli in 2014, liberating Jurf Al-Sakhr and planning the operation to take Tikrit in Iraq in 2015 from Daesh are memorable. In 2013, he coordinated the military plans with the militias and Hezbollah fighters and captured Qusayr, a town on the Syria-Lebanon border. In 2015, Russian military intervention on the side of President Assad was decisive, but it was Soleimani who had masterminded the ground support to fight against the Syrian rebels.
Q: Why do you think the US targeted Lieutenant General Soleimani, who played a major, active role in defeating Daesh?
A: First, after the defeat of Daesh the US saw Soleimani as an able military strategist of Iran, who had the potential to become a serious obstacle to the US imperial designs on Iran. Therefore, according to US imperial outlook, Soleimani’s death will make the US goals in the region easier. Secondly, both Israel and the US had coordinated their plans to assassinate him. He was perceived as a threat to the interests of the two close allies in the region.
Trump was impeached and Israeli PM Netanyahu was indicted last year. Trump and Netanyahu aim to win elections this year. The two will present the killing of Soleimani as a trophy to the electorate of America and Israel. Netanyahu knows how easy it is for him to influence American political establishment, the US Congress and American voters. Thus Trump has a big supporting ally in Netanyahu to win the election again. To our dismay, major international hegemons help each other in such devious ways.
Q: During his presidential campaigns, Trump claimed he would prevent further wars. What has pushed him in the last three years to the brink of a new war?
A: Netanyahu has used all the ploys. He has played a key role in pushing Trump to unilaterally retreat from the international nuclear agreement with Iran, and has done all to influence Trump to attack Iran. In this, he had people like Secretary of State Pompeo and former National Security Advisor Bolton doing their work for him.
To our surprise, Trump resisted any such military solution last year. He stopped only just ‘ten minutes to go’ before his order to attack Iran was carried out. He sacked war hawk Bolton. But all that political scenario has now changed with the assassination of General Soleimani. Trump has prepared the groundwork for a war on Iran that can lead to catastrophic consequences for the region and the world. The only person who benefits from such a conflict will be Netanyahu who is fighting for his political survival. The lives of people have no meaning for him if he can have his way.
Peace and Justice Post 
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