Taliban : An Analysis

Is the day drawing near when the bodybags of the thugs from Britain & US start arriving---de Ja Vue circa 19th century!when only one out of 26000 was sent back to report what happened to the rest.

The Muslim World is waiting with excited anticipation.

Taliban or no Taliban:Afghans,as muslims,do not want any western thugs on their soil once these servants have performed their duties.

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Kabul deal leaves peace force `crippled`

By Peter Foster in Kabul and Michael Smith Defence Correspondent

(Filed: 01/01/2002) ----DAILY TELEGRAPH!

THE British-led international force that is to provide security in the Afghan capital, Kabul, was left crippled last night by a deal with the Northern Alliance that puts control of even its own troops in doubt.

The ``military technical agreement`` between Maj-Gen John McColl and Younis Qanooni, the alliance strongman who controls the Afghan interior ministry, was finally initialled yesterday after weeks of disagreements.

But it allowed Mr Qanooni and Mohammad Fahim, the new defence minister and military commander of the Northern Alliance, to ignore a key part of the Bonn agreement insisting that their troops be withdrawn from the Afghan capital.

The International Security Assistance Force will be able to mount its own patrols, but under the terms of the agreement these will have to be synchronised with Afghan patrols, with the Afghan commanders implicitly in control of what happens on the ground.

All communications, whether on synchronised or joint patrols will be carried out through an interpreter, with the Afghan commander again in charge.

A senior British defence source said the ISAF would be in charge of its own troops and the Afghans in charge of their own. But he admitted: ``It will be important that we conduct our business at all levels to ensure that the Afghans feel in charge.``

He added that, while on joint patrol, ``the Afghan military will command their section and we will command ours`` but, crucially, declined to say who would assume ultimate command in the event of violence.

The agreement, added to what defence sources admitted was ``a significantly lower force level than the contributing countries had hoped for``, called into question the point of the international troops being there at all.

The force was originally championed by Tony Blair as a means of rebuilding Afghanistan. Up to 10,000 troops, led by Britain, would keep open the aid routes and prevent the Northern Alliance from imposing its will on Kabul.

But the problems began when Britain sent 200 members of the Special Boat Service into Bagram air base to prepare for the arrival of a 3,000-strong British contingent.

The Northern Alliance, which was anxious to keep control of Kabul and north-eastern Afghanistan demanded that the troops be withdrawn.

During protracted negotiations, it eventually agreed to allow a multi-national force to provide security in Kabul. But it insisted that it could be no larger than 3,000 troops, with only 1,000 carrying out the patrols and the remainder providing back-up.

The agreement initialled yesterday by Gen McColl and Mr Qanooni restricts the size of the international force to just 4,500. It remains unclear how many of these troops will be allowed to carry out patrols.

The source admitted that it would now be early February before the force was in place but a ``substantial force`` of about 1,500 troops led by 2 Bn the Parachute Regiment, would be in place by the middle of the month.

The full British contribution is expected to be about 1,500, including headquarters elements from 3 (UK) Division, which will command the force, and 16 Air Assault Brigade, which will be in charge of the British troops.

The negotiations have reduced the German contingent from about 1,200 to less than 800. Holland and France are expected to contribute about 300 men each, with 13 other countries, including Jordan, Turkey and Canada, providing troops.

General Deen Mohammad Jurhat, a senior interior ministry commander, attributed the delay in signing the deal to the alliance`s demands that the foreign troops adhere to Islamic codes on drinking and sex.

He said: ``Afghanistan is an Islamic country and Afghanistan`s laws are Islamic. For example, drinking alcohol and also sexual affairs is usual in the countries the troops come from. They must obey Afghanistan`s laws.``

But the senior British source said the key problem had been alleged differences between the English and Dari versions of the Bonn agreement, which, in its English version, stated unequivocally that the alliance`s troops must be withdrawn from Kabul.

``The interim administration`s interpretation of the Bonn agreement is that the armed forces should be confined to barracks,`` he said.

The reaction of Britain`s coalition partners is open to question. The agreement will not be formally signed until they have reviewed it and Germany in particular has expressed concerns.

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The worlds` #1 ROGUE STATE:--------US.

Surprised?---most people in the world are not.

Are you still licking their boots?_________________________________________________

The US On The World Stage -

A Rogue Nation?

By Richard Du Boff

Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG)

12-31-1

1. In December 2001, the United States officially withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, gutting the landmark agreement-the first time in the nuclear era that the US renounced a major arms control accord.



2. 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention ratified by 144 nations including the United States. In July 2001 the US walked out of a London conference to discuss a 1994 protocol designed to strengthen the Convention by providing for on-site inspections. At Geneva in November 2001, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton stated that ``the protocol is dead,`` at the same time accusing Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan, and Syria of violating the Convention but offering no specific allegations or supporting evidence.



3. UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms, July 2001: the US was the only nation to oppose it.



4. April 2001, the US was not re-elected to the UN Human Rights Commission, after years of withholding dues to the UN (including current dues of $244 million)-and after having forced the UN to lower its share of the UN budget from 25 to 22 percent. (In the Human Rights Commission, the US stood virtually alone in opposing resolutions supporting lower-cost access to HIV/AIDS drugs, acknowledging a basic human right to adequate food, and calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.)



5. International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty, to be set up in The Hague to try political leaders and military personnel charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Signed in Rome in July 1998, the Treaty was approved by 120 countries, with 7 opposed (including the US). In October 2001 Great Britain became the 42nd nation to sign. In December 2001 the US Senate again added an amendment to a military appropriations bill that would keep US military personnel from obeying the jurisdiction of the proposed ICC.



6. Land Mine Treaty, banning land mines; signed in Ottawa in December 1997 by 122 nations. The United States refused to sign, along with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Egypt, and Turkey. President Clinton rejected the Treaty, claiming that mines were needed to protect South Korea against North Korea`s ``overwhelming military advantage.`` He stated that the US would ``eventually`` comply, in 2006; this was disavowed by President Bush in August 2001.



7. Kyoto Protocol of 1997, for controlling global warming: declared ``dead`` by President Bush in March 2001. In November 2001, the Bush administration shunned negotiations in Marrakech (Morocco) to revise the accord, mainly by watering it down in a vain attempt to gain US approval.



8. In May 2001, refused to meet with European Union nations to discuss, even at lower levels of government, economic espionage and electronic surveillance of phone calls, e-mail, and faxes (the US ``Echelon`` program),



9. Refused to participate in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-sponsored talks in Paris, May 2001, on ways to crack down on off-shore and other tax and money-laundering havens.



10. Refused to join 123 nations pledged to ban the use and production of anti-personnel bombs and mines, February 2001



11. September 2001: withdrew from International Conference on Racism, bringing together 163 countries in Durban, South Africa



12. International Plan for Cleaner Energy: G-8 group of industrial nations (US, Canada, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, UK), July 2001: the US was the only one to oppose it.



13. Enforcing an illegal boycott of Cuba, now being made tighter. In the UN in October 2001, the General Assembly passed a resolution, for the tenth consecutive year, calling for an end to the US embargo, by a vote of 167 to 3 (the US, Israel, and the Marshall Islands in opposition).



14. Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty. Signed by 164 nations and ratified by 89 including France, Great Britain, and Russia; signed by President Clinton in 1996 but rejected by the Senate in 1999. The US is one of 13 nonratifiers among countries that have nuclear weapons or nuclear power programs. In November 2001, the US forced a vote in the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the Test Ban Treaty.



15. In 1986 the International Court of Justice (The Hague) ruled that the US was in violation of international law for ``unlawful use of force`` in Nicaragua, through its actions and those of its Contra proxy army. The US refused to recognize the Court`s jurisdiction. A UN resolution calling for compliance with the Court`s decision was approved 94-2 (US and Israel voting no).



16. In 1984 the US quit UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and ceased its payments for UNESCO`s budget, over the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) project designed to lessen world media dependence on the ``big four`` wire agencies (AP, UPI, Agence France-Presse, Reuters). The US charged UNESCO with ``curtailment of press freedom,`` as well as mismanagement and other faults, despite a 148-1 in vote in favor of NWICO in the UN. UNESCO terminated NWICO in 1989; the US nonetheless refused to rejoin. In 1995 the Clinton administration proposed rejoining; the move was blocked in Congress and Clinton did not press the issue. In February 2000 the US finally paid some of its arrears to the UN but excluded UNESCO, which the US has not rejoined.



17. Optional Protocol, 1989, to the UN`s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aimed at abolition of the death penalty and containing a provision banning the execution of those under 18. The US has neither signed nor ratified and specifically exempts itself from the latter provision, making it one of five countries that still execute juveniles (with Saudi Arabia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria). China abolished the practice in 1997, Pakistan in 2000.



18. 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The only countries that have signed but not ratified are the US, Afghanistan, Sao Tome and Principe.



19. The US has signed but not ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects the economic and social rights of children. The only other country not to ratify is Somalia, which has no functioning government.



20. UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, covering a wide range of rights and monitored by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The US signed in 1977 but has not ratified.



21. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948. The US finally ratified in 1988, adding several ``reservations`` to the effect that the US Constitution and the ``advice and consent`` of the Senate are required to judge whether any ``acts in the course of armed conflict`` constitute genocide. The reservations are rejected by Britain, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Mexico, Estonia, and others.



22. Is the status of ``we`re number one!`` Rogue overcome by generous foreign aid to given less fortunate countries? The three best aid providers, measured by the foreign aid percentage of their gross domestic products, are Denmark (1.01%), Norway (0.91%), and the Netherlands (0.79), The three worst: USA (0.10%), UK (0.23%), Australia, Portugal, and Austria (all 0.26). ___



Copyright, Richard Du Boff Reprinted for fair use only. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DUB112B.html

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You have the gist of the article peddled to Sulekha before feeding the Chowk orphans a stale ,second hand `basi` biryani .

I think my crtique must still be there ,so i am not going to waste my time even if you want to waste yours

Sameer,

Good article! Kudos for excellent insight.

``For Pakistanis, their interests are better served by amalgamation of rich native cultural heritage with only a sprinkle of Islamic Civilization.``

Is this possible at all? Perhaps you overlooked the psychological aspects.

If the whole of the Indian subcontinent had converted to Islam, what you wrote above may have been possible. As it stands, with only about 40% convertion, I think Naipaul has the last word when he speaks of `Neurosis of the converted`.

regards,

Not a bad article.

I thought you you were finally going to distance yourself from blaming Islam and the Army for all of the world`s problem, until I read the last paragraph. I am surprised you did not mention the ISI :)

I don`t think Muslims sympathesize with the Taliban as much as you are stating. Taliban have been completely wiped out and no one seems to be complaining, either inside or outside Afghanistan. Usually when whole regimes or governments get wiped out, a lot of people complain, if they support those ideals.

The problems with the Islamic world can be blamed on the conlonisers while these countries were colonised. And they should be blamed on the rulers of the these countries, after they became independent. The only real difference between countries which have advanced and which haven`t are the leaderships they received at their embroynic freedom stages. Where would Singapore be had there been no Lee Kuan Yu? Would Pakistan be independent had their been no Jinnah?

If one takes a look at the regimes that the independent Muslim countries received, after the colonisers left (or during mid 20th century), you will notice nearly all of them were Western educated and/or non-Islamic regimes, i.e. Libya, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Palestine, Bangladesh, Morroco, Algeria, Pakistan etc. Take the example of any country. Lets say Iran and Pakistan:

Iran was a basketcase of all varieties under the Shah. It is still a basketcase, but with a brighter future than it had under the Shah. Pakistan has never been ruled by Islamists. It has been ruled by Oxford, Harvard and Sandhurst and Govt. College Lahore graduates. It still is being ruled by such people. So how can one place the blame on anybody else except these leaderships. Infact Muslim common folk have gone out of their way in supporting non-Islamic leaderhships. It is only after being disappointed, again and again, that they have looked for other options. Pakistanis are still putting faith in non-Islamic leaderships, like the current one (Musharraf is about as secular a leader as one will find in the Islamic world).

Placing the blame on Islam and Islamic thought process for the backwardness of the Islamic world, is like blaming Harvard for producing Benazir, and blaming Sandhurst for producing Ayub. Should Pakistanis lose faith in Harvard and Oxford and Sandhurst because they apparently have produced terrible leaders, who have destroyed Pakistan (my jury is still out on Ayub, but I am quite sure on the Bhuttos)? Using the Taliban as a representative of Islam is like using the Bhuttos as a representative for US Ivy League schools.

The problems of the Islamic world have nothing to do with Islam, or Harvard, or the West. They have everything to do with lack of honest leadership, lack of education, excess of corruption, lack of dedication and lack of respect for the poor and underprivelaged. Unfortunately the Islamists are too busy lynching the secularists for these problems, and the secularists are too busy lynching the Islamists for these problems.

The Islamic world does not need secular or Islamic leaders. It needs honest and dedicated leaders. Once such leaders appear on the scene, these countries will automatically start progressing, and their secularness of Islamicness will become immaterial.

Considering the fact that Pakistan has had only one, ``Islamic`` leadership (Zia; even Zia was a product of the British military education system) and God-knows how many Western educated and non-Islamic ones (Jinnah and Benazir could barely speak Urdu straight, much less Arabic), Pakistan should be the most advanced country in the world. Ditto for India. All of its non-religious govts. should have turned India into Japan.

By consistently debating Islam/non-Islam as the problem of the Islamic world, we are completely missing the problems that actually need to be solved (education, corruption, etc.), and putting blame on concepts that are not the problem.

Khymer And Taliban

You must be on drugs to imagine that .

In insanity ppl. find association between micro wave oven & eaves dropping by russians LOL

Ask Libyan if they even know the meaning of Taleban.Its persian derived word unfamiliar to Arabs.

Ask tyhe indonesian .The only support Afghanistan be itr Northern Alliance or Any other Afghan

Very soon you would be claiming that PML or PPP are islamic Khymer Rhouge .

I have a feeling that American people have started feeling queasy about the feel good rhetoric, which their government is trying to sell to them ``they hate us because they hate democracy and freedom``. ``Taliban are/were inhuman`` etc. In a year or two when US populace will get over its jingoist fever and writers will start writing without the fear of being labeled as unpatriotic we might start hearing very different point of view on Talibans etc. People (American) are already perplexed seeing women in shuttlecock burqas when taliban are gone, they are astonished to see people still have beards, and Northern Alliance soldiers also beat up women with sticks when they line up for food. Especially people in the West are itching to write about the murder of several thousand POWs with complete disregard of International laws and geneva convention at Mazar-e-Sharif and Qila Janigi etc.

For the rest of the world the Afghanistan was never a dilemma. The failure of Americans to present a credible proof to the world of the culpability of OBL, especially the one which prompted them to attack Afgahanistan and also the fact that Afghanistan did offer to hand over OBL to a neutral nation, make the war on Afghanistan to be viewed as shameless aggression of the strongest nation of the world on the weakest and most vulnerable nation in the world. I see that when a future historian will write about Afghanistan without the influence of CNN he will view taliban as the one who stood up to the bully and laid down their lives but refused to compromise over principles.

Let me quote what OBL has said in one of his recent tapes ``When people see a strong horse and a weak horse they by nature like the strong horse``. I think it will be almost impossible to prove to the rest of the world that Talibans were weak horse despite any number of analyses. Because such analyses still can`t prove that Tipu Sultan, Shujaul Daula, General Bakht Khan, Subhash Chandar Bose were the weak horses.

``For Pakistanis, their interests are better served by amalgamation of rich native cultural heritage with only a sprinkle of Islamic Civilization.``

The ``experiment`` has failed miserably in most of the Muslim World, especially, in Arab world where it was called Pan Arab Nationalism under Nasir. It has also failed under Bhutto senior who did try to do so with fantastic concepts such as Islami Socialism etc. with the help of Maulana Whisky and other Jhonny Walkers but it backfired miserably.

The problem is the lack of understanding of this religion when some impossible demands are made. It is the nature of this religion (Islam) that it makes culture its subset but it never becomes the subset of culture. That is the reason it is universal as compared to localized religions like Hinduism where Hindusim remains a cultural subset. The problem still is looking at Islam with with Hinduist paradigm whereas it should be analysed objectively.

So my friend it is time to go back to the roots-sooner or later-fundamentalism it is-like it or not.

Sameer

``For Pakistanis, their interests are better served by amalgamation of rich native cultural heritage with only a sprinkle of Islamic Civilization.``

When a country is created by the TNT, there is no chance for such a way of thinking. Anything indian becomes an anathema to the pakis, they have to search for something islamic. And again there is problem, what is really islamic has been claimed or is symbolised by saudi. devoid of anything cultural inclusing the basant festival, pakistanis have to go for the real mccoy version of islam, the taliban, the madrassa and the jihadists. i do believe that theat is the only cultural space available for pakistan and whether you accept it or not, pakistan will become increasingly jihadist, essentially in response to the question, layilaha illlalla, pakistan ka matlab kya.

One man, call him the sole spokesman, or the senile spokes man, is not competant to answer that. It has to be answered by the millions of pakistanis, and men from the madrassas scattered across the country have the answers.

Are you still watching CNN & still view yourself as half-intelligent?ALWAYS ALWAYS believe ANY news which is AGAINST US.Because that is where your salvation lies.

Or are you still enjoying licking their boot for a fistfull of dollars up your arse?__________________________________________________

Has the time come to remind the British & American thugs that great ditty by Kipling about Afghan plains & the cutting up of the dying baboons?A grand spectacle for the world to see?

Rejoice!The time is not far for such a world event.

Verily!Allah works in mysterious ways.

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Posting it here also. Studebaker.

Jan 1 2002: Siddharth comments on Taliban - Another Khmer Rouge? by J. B. Sameer

Mr.Sameer

writes,

``The topics of past perfection, delusions of grandeur and superstitious confidence in invulnerability must be limited to Islamic Bollywood only.``

A prejudiced,biased & tainted summary of writers believes.

Taleban may have been a household world in Pakistan ,the place of origin of Mr.Author ,but billion minus few million Taleban supporter in Pakistan,has no meaning from Bangladesh to Morocco & indonesia to Malaysia .It may be being close to home ,Author thinks world of Punjab Pakistan is world of ISLAM ,it isnt.

Its fashionable to bash islam for majority of English reader-ship AND IT BECOMES DOUBLE EFFECTIVE WHEN ITS A CAMAFLOUGED MUSLIM DOING IT .

Why are you hiding the truth.Are you nutts to think you can deny that you are a Pakistani Muslim.Only if denial was as good as plastic surgery in altering our identity .People like you are suspect on both sides of the line divide .I feel sorry for patients like you ,inflicted with there own antibodies attacking itself like auto immune disease .

India pullout troops from the borders

Nuclear Threat make Hindians Buckle ....he.he..he..he

India welcomes Pak action against terrorist



leaders

NDTV Correspondent

Monday, December 31, 2001 (New Delhi):

India has termed reports from Pakistan on arrests of leaders of terrorist outfits as a ``step forward in the correct direction``. India has blamed the Pakistan-based terrorist outfits, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), for carrying out the December 13 suicide attack on Parliament.

``If this information is confirmed, then it is a step forward in correct direction,`` External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh told reporters after a one and-a-half hour long meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) chaired by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

He was replying to a question whether New Delhi was satisfied with actions being taken by the Pervez Musharraf regime against JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar and LeT founder Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.

Singh said India had received information about ``some action`` having been taken by Pakistani authorities against LeT and JeM including arrest of leaders and raids being conducted on some premises of these organisations.

``We hope that such actions against terrorist groups targeting India including Jammu and Kashmir would be pursued vigorously and cross-border terrorism eliminated``, Singh added.

On the Pakistani demand that India should furnish evidence against these terrorist groups, Singh said ``It is strange to talk about this`` when the country was a victim of terrorist aggression.

``So far as the evidence of terrorist activities is concerned, it has been provided in a sufficient manner to international community``, he said adding it was largely on that basis that Islamabad had taken action against the terrorist outfits.

Singh said India would be handing over a list to Pakistan High Commission here of terrorists and criminals, who had taken refuge in that country. He, however, did not give out any further details including the number of terrorists and criminals named in the list.

He said India has been informing the Interpol about the activities of these terrorist outfits leading to ``red alert`` being issued against them by the Paris-based organisation.

On whether the government was satisfied with the US efforts to contain Pakistan sponsored cross-border terrorism, the External Affairs Minister said Washington had made a clear commitment to stamp out terrorism globally.

The Cabinet Committee on Security discussed essential issues concerning India`s security in view of the December 13 attack and also the international and regional developments after the incident.

Diplomatic means

Defence Minister George Fernandes today said while India was trying to make Pakistan accede to its demands over terrorism through diplomatic means, New Delhi would take whatever steps which become essential if these attempts failed.

``So far we have concentrated on the diplomatic offensive and this will continue till one concludes there is an end of the road in terms of diplomacy,`` he said.

Addressing troops of the Army and Air Force at several forward locations in the Western Sector, Fernandes said the diplomatic efforts were ``perhaps likely`` to bring results ``but in an unlikely event of this not happening, then one will have to take decisions and these decisions will be very demanding``.

He also took a broadside at the US, saying its objective in the war against terrorism was limited to catching or killing Osama bin Laden and had done nothing ``more than rhetoric`` in ``making Pakistan understand``.

Asserting that no decision had been taken so far on whether India should go to war to achieve a win against terrorism, Fernandes said ``efforts are on to resolve the situation through diplomatic efforts`` and Prime Minister Vajpayee and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh were engaged in it at the moment.

Stressing that Pakistan still did not appear to be honest in its actions against terrorists, Fernandes said it ``should understand and accept how big a sin it has committed``.

``We don`t want any such situation where there could be a lot of loss in this region,`` he said, adding Pakistan has thrust the proxy war on India over the last decade and the world should see and make Islamabad desist from it. ``If it is not done, we will do whatever is needed,`` he asserted.

Lauding the G-8 statement asking Pakistan to meet the demands of India, he said it indicates ``we are on the right track``. He said the European Union, the US and the UK have also told Pakistan to act against terrorists.

Jaitley tells Pak to tackle terrorism on its eastern border

India has said that it has given Pakistan a list of terrorists involved in crimes in India and demanded they be handed over for trial.

``A list of terrorists involved in crimes in India has been given to Pakistan. If these terrorists are handed over, then certainly I think a situation more conducive to both the countries (for talks) can arise,`` Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley told CNN`s ``Late Edition`` programme.

Jaitley made the remarks when asked how close India and Pakistan were to a war. ``We do hope that such a situation does not arise where we have to go to a war. But the entire onus of that will depend on the kind of stand Pakistan takes,`` he said.

Asked if Prime Minister Vajpayee would talk to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf at the Kathmandu SAARC summit next month, Jaitley said, ``Well, it does not appear that the situation Pakistan is creating is conducive to a dialogue.``

``Pakistan can`t be encouraging this kind of cross-border insurgency. In the attack on Parliament, all the five terrorists killed were Pakistanis. There has been voluminous evidence of involvement of organizations within that country (Pakistan) in this attack and then they say: Let us have a dialogue,`` the Law Minister said.

Referring to Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar`s demand for evidence for acting against the terrorists, Jaitley said Maulana Masood Azhar heads an organization, which is responsible for the attack on Parliament and was released from Indian prison through ``the coercive process of hijacking a plane``.

``Does the Pakistan Foreign Minister still need evidence?`` he said. Jaitley said actions by Pakistan against terrorists could not be ``ornamental in terms of making public announcements and after a few days freezing their (terrorist groups) accounts allowing money to flow out``.

Jaitley said while Sattar had agreed to hand over Osama bin Laden, if apprehended in Pakistan, to the US, he cannot have a different standard when it came to terrorists on Pakistan`s eastern border.

Asked what India expected US President Bush to do to reduce Indo-Pak tension, he replied that the international community should have the same yardstick and same standard which was adopted for the Taliban and bin Laden in relation to the September 11 attack on US.

``Whichever part of the world terrorists commit offences should be treated at par and we expect the same standard to be applied.`` Jaitley added that greater pressure should be brought on Pakistan to act against terrorists and their organizations operating on its soil. (With PTI inputs)

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Sameer JB

Nice work...the comparision between the extremist, reactionary Khmer Rouge and the Taliban was well made, and a connection I had not made before. You had written that the Khmer Rouge massacred Cambodians to ensure their frightening delusions of ``purity``; I am particularly interested in this aspect of your presentation. As our world grows increasing multicultural, multireligious and multiracial, (although arguably, it has to some extent always been that way) our governments must be able to serve our countries in a humane and economically, politically and socially equal manner. I am extremely skeptical about whether this is possible in many of the Islamic cultures that exist today...any thoughts on the current govt. in Uzbekistan, btw?

regards

hamzad afaqui # 2

I am not an apologist for US governments. Some of the points are valid. Most of them are bogus. I made a quick rebuttal to several points.

1. US is a sovreign state. It has the right to withdraw from the ABM treaty. The ABM treaty has provisions which allow for that.

2. US has reservations about letting other countries inspect it sites because they fear the loss of secrets. US has no need for biological weapons. They have the most powerful nuclear arsenal. The countries mentioned have good reasons to develop biological weapons.

3. By signing a UN agreement on small arms do you think countries will stop selling small arms.

4. US was not elected to UN Human rights commission because of politics. Algeria, Burundi

China, Cuba, Congo, Libya, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria and Vietnam are on this commission. Do you want to take your chances with the judicial system of these states ?

5. US opposed International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty because they felt it would be used to file frivlous cases against US military. Imagine the Taleban filing a case against US military for human right abuses.

6. Land Mines are cruel weapons. They are useful in deterring aggression by large armies. Certain states see the need for those weapons.

8. Electronic surveillance is critical for US national security. Now only they picked out the e-mails of Al Quedda members.

11. Why bother participate in a conference where you are going to be bashed ?

13. USA has the right to decide whether it wants to trade with Cuba.

14. US has observed the CTBT in spite of non-ratifying it.

15. Cold war stuff.

16. USA has the right to quit any international body it wants to. That does not make it a rogue state.

18. In what way do women in USA are discriminated ? Are those forms of discrimination eliminated in other countries that have signed the treaty ?

19. In what way are the rights of kids in USA violated ?

22. On foreign aid, USA makes up with more access for foreign countries to its markets. Foreign trade has done more for the people of developing world than foreign aid which has enriched the pockets of elite as opposed to helping the poor.

romair # 3

Secularism has worked in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and most of East Asia.

India economic problems have to do with socialism than secularism. Secularism has kept the country intact.

Secularism is a necessary condition for economic progress. Not sufficient in itself.

Islam is a guide for how individuals should think, act etc.. There is nothing in Islam that tells people how to run a modern state. Example: Using the Quranic quote on usury to disallow interest on loans is to ignore the time value of money in modern finance.

Urstruly # 7

Sorry to prick the bubble. Taleban is a creation of Pakistani intelligence service. Pakistani backers supported the extreme Islamic ideology to appeal to rural Pusthuns, co-opt Saudi Wahabi dollars and to prevent secular nationalism among Pusthuns (so that they don`t complain about Durrand line). Some where down the line in 1996-98 they became the political vehicle for the aspirations of Pusthuns in Afghanistan. That explains the atrocities against the Tajiks, Hazaras. On top of it they gave assylum to Osama and allowed him to use Afghanistan as a training base for Osama`s organization. I will be glad to post zillions of articles to support it.

As far as murder of POWs in Mazar-e-Sharif, it is no different from the killing of Russian POWs and other foreigners who bothered to butt their heads in the internal affairs of Afghanistan. Quit whining.

Taleban and principles ?? What principles ??

History is written by winners. That is reality. Subash Chandra Bose is a loser. Not to the British, but to Gandhi/Nehru. In retrospect Tipu Sultan was a loser. He could not convince the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Marathas to join him against the British. In fact he (and his dad) weakened himself fighting other Indians. It is not like the citizens of Mysore were clamouring for the return of his rule.

Urstruly # 8

The paradigm for success in most of East Asia:

Secularism + free market economy + good relations with USA/Japan + good governance + emphasis on development of human resources

India messed up on free market economy. Hence the current state.

Communism and Islam

You are comparing a horse and a donkey

The way of Jinnah

By Ardeshir Cowasjee

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, at Lahore, October 24, 1947: ``I would like to impress upon every Mussalman who has at heart the welfare and the prosperity of Pakistan, to avoid retaliation and to exercise restraint, because retaliation and violation of law and order will ultimately result in weakening the very foundations of the edifice you have cherished all these years to erect. Do your duty and have faith in God. There is no power on earth that can undo Pakistan.``

Wise words of warning, that went unheeded or unheard. Jinnah`s Pakistan died with him, with the death knell of September 11, 1948, and it took his talented countrymen a mere 23 years to undo what remained. By December 1971 the nation lay sundered in half.

Now, after the passage of over half a century, we have a leadership that is attempting to rebuild the country and the nation in the mould as visualized by its maker, Jinnah. Speaking to the people from Jinnah`s Mazar on December 25, commemorating the 125th anniversary of his birth, President General Pervez Musharraf told them that the way forward, the way he was attempting to take them, was Jinnah`s way, as defined by him. But to move forward ``we will have to step very cautiously.`` Whatever decisions he takes, said Musharraf, are taken with Jinnah`s vision of Pakistan in mind. Jinnah`s vision encompassed a welfare state drawing inspiration from the tenets of true Islam, built on the foundations of democracy, with respect and protection for the individual, with equal rights for men, women and children irrespective of their religious faith or political views.

He quoted from the speech made long ago, in 1941 by the country`s maker to the Punjab Muslim Students Federation :

``There are at least three main pillars which go to make a nation worthy of possessing a territory and running a government. One is education. Next, no nation and no people can ever do anything very much without making themselves economically powerful in commerce, trade and industry. And lastly, you must prepare yourselves for your defence, defence against external aggression and to maintain internal security.``

In tune with Jinnah`s enunciation of his creed in his never to be forgotten and always to be repeated time and time again speech of August 11 1947, Musharraf asked his countrymen to ``sink all religious and sectarian differences and show tolerance of each other`s beliefs, views and thoughts, to shun religious differences,`` as had the nation`s father when addressing the members of the Constituent Assembly. Religious intolerance, said Musharraf, has utterly blurred Jinnah`s vision. The nation has deviated from that vision to the extent that aside from being unable to tolerate other religions, ``we refuse to accommodate the views of the various sects of our own religion. We are killing each other for differences in fiqhs and maslaks. We have undermined Islam to a level that people of the world associate it with illiteracy, backwardness, intolerance, obscurantism and militancy.``

And what was it that Jinnah told his assembly members ? ``You are free, free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of state. As you know, history shows that in England conditions some time ago were much worse than those prevailing in India today.

``The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some states in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state.

The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist, what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the nation. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal ``.

Now, from the very beginning, from the outset, the leaders of Pakistan who have followed Jinnah have distorted his words to suit their immediate expedient self-serving purposes. This particular passage from his most important address has been subject to deliberate distortion and misinterpretation, having inspired the dishonest dogmatists who misappropriated the country after his death. In the official biography of Jinnah commissioned by the Government of Pakistan, written by Hector Bolitho and published in 1954, it was brutally bowdlerized to falsely read: `` You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state. Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal ...``.

We had to wait for an American, Professor Stanley Wolpert, to write what is the definitive biography of the man Jinnah as he really was - and he was commissioned by no one but himself. Yet, when the book was published in 1984 its distribution in Pakistan was proscribed because of one passage he had quoted from M C Chagla`s book, `Roses in December` which referred to Jinnah`s eating and drinking preferences.

Wolpert was put under much pressure (as he reminded us when he spoke at the Aga Khan University auditorium this December 26) when the government of General Zia-ul-Haq offered to buy thousands of copies of his book were he to excise that particular passage. Of course, he refused. The amount of research Wolpert has put into his book can be gauged from the 40-odd pages of Notes and Bibliography.

Back to MAJ and February 19, 1948, when he again stressed : ``But make no mistake, Pakistan is not a theocracy or anything like it. Islam demands from us the tolerance of other creeds and we welcome in closest association with us all those who of whatever creed are themselves willing and ready to play their part as true and loyal citizens of Pakistan.``

As he was to say a few days later: ``In any case, Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims - Hindus, Christians and Parsis. They are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.

What he tried to make clear on August 11, 1947 to the future legislators and administrators of his country is that ``the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the state.`` He told them he would not tolerate the evils of bribery, corruption, blackmarketeering and ``this great evil, the evil of nepotism and jobbery,`` the daily bread of powermongers. Little did he know that day that these prime evils were to become prerequisites for the survival of the politicians in and out of uniform and of the administrators of all ranks and grades for the maintenance of their power.

Musharraf admitted this on December 25 that ``corruption and nepotism have eaten the nation like termites from within``. He made an appeal to the so-called `elite`, the rich elite (most of them undeserving of the appellation) : ``Let society treat the corrupt with contempt so that the fear of God is put into them and they at least hide and feel ashamed instead of showing off their ill-gotten riches.`` Yes, general, you are right. But then would Mohammad Ali Jinnah approve of your National Accountability Bureau when it makes `deals` with the corrupt, with the robbers, and rather than extracting what it can from their ill-gotten gains, and then letting them stand trial and be sentenced and hopefully be sent to jail, it frees them, as reportedly is happening with the former chief of our Navy?

However, and whatever may happen, Jinnah`s enunciated vision for his country cannot be changed, no matter how invasive the censorship and bowdlerizing of his words. If we do now have a man intent upon focusing upon that vision, and with the strength and support to see that the vision becomes reality, we should be a grateful nation.

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I knew the day MODERN PAKISTANIS ,let that scum bag ,VIDYA N.S.Paul & MOST detesting of an act of any `SHAREEF`family could do even in Hindian families is ,.....let loose there woman NADIRA for this crazy Widower ,N.S./Paul to seduce woman from of all most restrictive of all society ---Islamic .

This Modern Pakistanis read Naipaul who writes two books after being nurtured & mothered by Muslim Girl ,BOTH against Muslims & Islam based not on erudition or even intelligence ,for Naipaul is neither a Historian nor anthropoligist by education.

But the western world is what it is with rspect to Islam ,for e.g. there celebration of Salman Rushdie & giving of Nobel to Naipaul for his abhorrence of Islam,just when world opinion was fully exploited by western media to smear in the ashes of Twin Tower 9-11 tragedy.

If Pakistan reverts to more radical ,it is these modernists to be blamed.After partition Pakistan was given free reign to even surpass conservative India.But what did they do with that freedom.Did they educate there women?..No Did they train there men for technological advancement? ..No ONly they developed FASHION SHOW ,FASHION model.I remember seing `see through `fashion show in Karachi & Lahore when India was making films like Do Raste AGIANST western values.

Like any rebound any back lash by Jamaat or Jaish is because these very modernist who have barterred there women for photo op with anyone who have been celebrated by west like NAIPAul ,rushdie,vINOD kHANNA (RAJNESH FOLLOWER & BJP CANDIDATE))

kABIR bEDI(DIVORCEE & SOAP OPERA chip & dale)

WE have our self to be blame before the illiterate in english ,madrsaah educated mass ,which do out number these influential `MODERN`in the sense of a teflon coating only rather any Newton,Fleming ,Edison,GrahamBell,which they never will be.

Babbu # 16

I liked this post because it was very constructive and positive.

``Secularism + free market economy + good relations with USA/Japan + good governance + emphasis on development of human resources``

My comments:

Secularism:

Should be an individual choice. In case of Paksitan it can never work and it will also cause the collapse of Democracy if and when there will be any. Secularism for India-most definitely.

Free Market Economy:

It is the greatest scam of the 20th century. It has no meaning for third world countries. FME is the honor among theives-the capital theives that is. Just try to answer one simple question: How can a third world country be Capitalist. In order to be a Capitalist you gotta have Capital. Excuse my eye sight but I dont see any-including with India.

``good relations with USA/Japan``

Agreed. No problemo. Why not if the same is reciprocated.

``+ good governance``

Agreed. None of the above can be achived without it.

+ emphasis on development of human resources

Agreed. There aint no other way.

Post # 15

My bubble has been pricked several times before-tell me something new.

Hope this is a great year for all of us, except for those who derive happiness from the misfortune of others.

Things are looking so much better on the Pakistani scene.... what with the crackdown on militants and all.

I hope Pakistan continues to make positive changes in the year to come.

Peace & Luv & happiness :)

Urstruly,

Secularism merely means: Separation of the state and clergy, and I believe we have achieved that more so than many other states.

Secularism also means equal rights for all, regardless of any distinction...here we have failed... But I dont see how secularism would infringe on Pakistan`s democracy...?

Hindu Sena men fire at New Year revellers









UCKNOW: Two New Year eve revellers were injured when Hindu Sena activists opened fire with home-made revolvers to disrupt the celebrations at a fun club in Indira Nagar locality on Faizabad Road late on Monday night, police sources said here on Tuesday.

The activists, allegedly led by their state unit president Alok Dube, reached the Super Fun and Food Centre and broke the window panes and tried to disrupt the New Year bash there, the sources said adding the security guard posted at the centre also fired from his licenced weapon to disperse the mob.

A case has been registered in this connection and investigations were on, the sources added.

Earlier, the Hindu Sena had through a letter to the district authorities warned that it would stall all programmes organised in the city`s hotels and clubs on the New Year eve because they are against the Indian culture.

( PTI )







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IF IT AINT BROKEN DONT FIX IT.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1826/18261180.htm

GENDER ISSUES

Dubious choice

A U.S.-based company`s advertisement campaign in an Indian newspaper to market a pre-conception sex selection technique, exploiting the son-preference in Indian society, runs into rough weather. PARVATHI MENON

SROBONA ROY CHOUDHURY

in Bangalore INDIAN women, under social and familial pressure to produce sons, are very often forced to find ways to do so, often at great risk to their health. Commonly available techniques such as ultrasound scanning make it possible to determine the sex of the foetus within the first trimester of pregnancy. The demand for this relatively simple and inexpensive technique is so high that unregistered mobile diagnostic clinics have mushroomed, and female foetuses are often aborted. The status of the girl child in India is reflected in the juvenile sex-ratio, which has registered a sharp decline over the last decade - from 945 females per 1,000 males in the 1991 Census to 927:1,000 in 2001. COURTESY: VIMOCHANA

Women and child rights groups demonstrating outside the office of a newspaper in Bangalore on November 26. Cashing in on son-preference, a value that is entrenched in Indian society, a new sex-selection procedure has entered the market. A United States-based company recently ran a series of advertisements in The Times of India for a gender selection approach that is ``safe``, ``easy-to-use`` and ``upto 96 per cent effective``. ``Gender Selection is now a reality,`` the advertisement read, along with a photograph of a bonny baby boy. The advertisement provoked immediate protests from women`s and child rights groups in Bangalore that are fighting retrograde social attitudes and practices that discriminate against the girl-child. The groups were equally critical of the newspaper that carried the advertisement, for allowing commercial objectives to overshadow its social responsibilites. Vimochana, a city-based women`s organisation, held a demonstration outside the newspaper`s office, which it followed with a letters-to-the-editor campaign. In this it was joined by the Network to Empower Women Journalists (NEWJ), a Bangalore-based women journalists` organisation. The Times of India subsequently stopped running the advertisement, but not before it had made its editorial judgment on the matter. In an editorial entitled ``Sophie`s Choice``, it acknowledged the widespread misuse of sex-determination techniques and the failure of legislation to bring new and questionable technologies for sex-selection within its ambit. However, it also justified its decision to carry the advertisement by arguing that women must be given the ``freedom of choice``, a fundamental tenet of democracy. ``Can we abridge an individual`s right to choose the gender of her child before conception?`` the editorial asked. The newspaper`s stand has added a new dimension to the ongoing controversy. What are the ethical and social responsibilities of the media with respect to social issues, and in this specific case, a blatant form of discrimination that women face? ``Almost every day, newspapers publish at least one case of a woman being murdered or driven to suicide because she failed to produce a male child,`` Dona Fernandes of Vimochana told Frontline. ``The toll-free international number for India provided in the advertisement clearly shows that the company is trying to exploit the Indian market. Allowing Gen-Select to market its product will mean giving encouragement to the obsession for male babies that is widespread in our country,`` she added. Vimochana has filed a complaint against the product with the Health and Family Welfare Department, stating that it violates the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994. Gen-Select, the company, provides sketchy details about its product both in its advertisement and on its website. Frontline contacted the promoters, Jill and Scott Sweazy, who offered through e-mail information on the procedure and the reasons for promoting it in India. The Sweazys` claim that it was not the commercial opportunities India offered which led them to market the product in India, but a deeper moral and ethical urge. The procedure, they emphasise, is not a pre-natal, but a pre-conception one. ``We found that the people of India have a strong desire to choose the sex of their children and frequently go to the extreme of foeticide to achieve this goal,`` Jill Sweazy said, side-stepping any mention of the fact that it is the female foetus that is inevitably aborted. ``With our product, the freedom to choose the gender of your next child is preserved, while the moral, ethical and legal issues of foeticide are put at ease,`` said Sweazy. Hardly anyone will incur the expense and make the effort to acquire a kit, unless they are desperate. The Indian experience (``the strong desire of the people of India`` that Jill Sweazy alludes to) shows that it is the desperation for sons that drives couples to commit female foeticide. She claims that a part of the proceeds from the sale of every Gen-Select kit sold in India would be donated to the cause of prevention of foeticide. The website received thousands of hits in the first week of the product`s advertising, she said. While she did not disclose the actual number of requests for the kit from India, Jill Sweazy said that they were ``encouraged by the favourable response to their product in India`` and were `` already processing requests for both boy and girl kits``. Claiming scientific validity for the method, which is known as the ``Fully Integrated Programme,`` she said that they had put in a patent application for it a year ago. The method, ``as simplistic as it is intricate,`` is dressed up in pseudo-scientific jargon. It has four components as described by its developers. First, there is a prescribed dose of ``carefully formulated gender specific nutriceutical supplement``. The nutriceuticals include ``specific univalent and divalent cationic elements`` which ``combined with appropriate vitamins and herbal extracts``, can create the ``strongest bias possible for successfully accomplishing a conception of the requested gender``. The nutriceuticals are produced in Food and Drug Administration-approved facilities in the U.S., they add. The second aspect of the method is monitoring monthly ovulation cycles by recording changes in body temperature (here the kit helpfully provides a digital thermometer) and charting instructions for timing sexual union. Here the Sweazys offer a proposition that effectively knocks the bottom off their method. ``Strong evidence exists,`` Jill Sweazy notes, ``which shows that the ratio of viable `y` carrying (male) sperm and `x` carrying (female) sperm differ in concentration in the female reproductive tract depending upon when they were deposited.`` The third element of the method lies in the use of external sprays or douches which will alter the acidic/alkaline environment of the female reproductive tract. The mysterious ```x` carrying (female) sperms have a survival advantage in acidic secretions while the `y` carrying (male) sperms have motility advantage in more alkaline solutions.`` The last component recommends ``specific dietary guidelines`` that will change the ``critical elements in the male and female reproductive fluid``. The kit is ``specially priced`` at $196 (approximately Rs.5,800) for India. DR. LEELA PAI, a leading obstetrician and gynaecologist in Bangalore, told Frontline that pre-conception sex-selection technologies are not scientifically validated. A procedure such as the Fully Integrated Programme would fall in the category of ``hit or miss`` techniques. According to Dr. C.M. Francis of the Community Health Cell, Bangalore, altering the alkalinity of the body through the use of external sprays is risky and can lead to infertility. The Gen-Select method and kit, Dr. Francis said, was designed in such a way that the company will have the least legal accountability. ``In case the method fails, the company can get away by saying that the instructions were not followed, or that they only promised `up to 96 per cent` effectiveness,`` he added. Gen-Select cannot be prosecuted under the provisions of Indian law, Jill Sweazy told Frontline in an e-mail. According to her, the relevant law (the PNDT Act, 1994) only applies to pre-natal diagnostic techniques, not to pre-conception techniques. ``Our product is a pre-conception product and is subsequently not governed by provisions addressing pre-natal concerns,`` she said. Anitha Shenoy, a Delhi-based lawyer, disagrees. She is part of the Lawyers Collective, which is representing the petitioners in a public interest petition filed in the Supreme Court, seeking changes in the PNDT Act. Since the Act aims to prohibit the use of modern medical techniques in ways that discriminate against women, Shenoy said, it can be interpreted widely. In fact, in medical dictionaries, the word `pre-natal` includes the pre-conception period as well. She said that the newspaper that carried the offending advertisement also violated the PNDT Act. Section 22 of the Act prohibits any advertisement that relates to pre-natal determination of sex. The Supreme Court is monitoring the implementation of the PNDT Act. Drawing a link between the declining juvenile sex ratio and the proliferation of sex determination diagnostic clinics, the Supreme Court had, on May 4, 2001, issued a directive to the Centre and the State governments to ``monitor and review the implementation of the PNDT Act`` (Frontline, June 22, 2001). On August 6, the apex court issued summons, to appear on August 10, to the Chief Secretaries of the 13 States which had failed to submit progress reports on the implementation of the Act. The court directive came after a public interest petition was filed jointly by the Centre of Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT), Mumbai; the Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM), Pune; and Dr. Sabu M. George, a health policy expert and activist in the campaign against female foeticide. The petitioners have asked for the inclusion of pre-conception sex-selection techniques within the purview of the Act. They have also asked for a ban on advertisements promoting the use of sex-selection techniques. ``It is significant that apart from Bangalore, few other cities had any objection to the advertisement,`` Dr. George told Frontline. He was also critical of the media in general for having remained silent on the Gen-Select issue. ``Despite seeing the effects of discriminatory technologies like these on India`s demographic pattern, it is tragic that people are still willing to endorse the product. When pre-natal sex-determination techniques became common, there was an alarming increase in the number of foeticides. Now if pre-conception sex-selection technologies become easily available, the possibilities are frightening,`` he said.

Urstruly 21:

Secularism is needed to prevent tensions in multi-ethnic Muslim societies. A lot of Muslim countries - Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan are multi-ethnic.

Otherwise one ethnic group will use Islam as a easy vehicle to impose their power on other groups. In the process you start a civil war undermining the whole society. Afghanistan under Taleban was a classic example.

Free Market Economics involves multiple concepts - stable currency, reasonably balanced budgets, prudent taxation, supply-demand to determine prices, minimal amount of subsidies etc.

There is a lot of capital among third world elites. But they put their money in safe places. The question to ask is simple - where is it safe to put your money. USA ?? Pakistan ?? Somalia ??

Pakistan`s problems are very simple. Pakistan overspent in the past using borrowed money. Now they have a hard time repaying old debts.

Popular Islam of our times

Philosophies dealing with the betterment of human kind can never be challenged. Why? Because the principles on which such philosophies are based are generic in nature. How a philosophy is defined in a particular age indicates the popular face of that particular philosophy.

So, there is Islam and then there is the popular Islam of our times: the way Islam has been interpreted by the religious leaders of this age. It will be very foolish to not understand that the recent events call for a thorough reformation of that popular Islam. You would have imagined the process of reformation starting somewhere. It hasn`t, and I don`t understand why.

InTERESTING FACTS ABOUT LONE ALIVE SUSPECT IN THE 9-11Tragedy HIJACKING INCIDENT.

http://member.compuserve.com/news/content.jsp?floc=NT-slot2&file=news/slot2/moussaoui.jsp

..........Moussaoui`s mother, Aicha el-Wafi, came to the United States from France last week and said her son told her he could prove his innocence. She didn`t appear in the courtroom Wednesday The defendant, 33, is a French citizen of Moroccan descent who received a master`s degree in England.

Although Moussaoui has been in federal custody on immigration charges since August, when he aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school, the indictment says he conspired with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill and maim victims in the United States. While accusing him of links to Osama bin Laden`s terrorist network, the indictment does not explain his role in the terror attacks.

Nonetheless, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Moussaoui an active participant with the 19 hijackers who crashed four jetliners in New York, Washington and Western Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people.

The indictment accuses Moussaoui of pursuing some of the same activities as the hijackers by taking flight training in the United States, inquiring about crop dusting and purchasing flight deck training videos.

Moussaoui received money in July and August from Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, an alleged member of a German terrorist cell who was a roommate of Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader in the attacks, the indictment charges. The FBI contends Bin al-Shibh may have been planning to be the 20th hijacker.

The indictment alleges that Moussaoui was present at the al-Qaida-affiliated Khalden Camp in Afghanistan. By the end of September 2000, he was making parallel moves to some of the hijackers with his flight lessons, crop-dusting interest and training video purchases.

A clear indication of the case`s importance was Senate passage of legislation to broadcast the trial on closed-circuit television in the cities most affected by the hijackings.

The House has not acted on the measure, which is modeled on a similar privilege granted to Oklahoma City bombing victims and families.

Cameras usually are not permitted in federal courtrooms, but Court TV has challenged the rule as unconstitutional and filed a motion to broadcast the proceedings. Brinkema set a Jan. 9 hearing for Court TV`s motion and gave the prosecution and defense until Friday to make their positions known.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without prior written authority.





[] Copyright ©2002 CompuServe Interactive Services

Babu-----#13

Despite your disclaimer(perhaps to s/uck a hapless reader into reading it) is nothing but a litany of apologies for the Great Satan.

Laanut upon amreekaa!The Roguest country in the world!

EST Reply #: 9

jay

``When a country is created by the TNT, ``]]

If you want to be educated on various reasons why Pakistan came into being as an ADULT & not sophmoric teachings of Indian NCERT which will teach you b/c muslims fought it our ,then read your own press

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1826/18260810.htm





Volume 18 - Issue 26, Dec. 22, 2001 - Jan. 04, 2002

India`s National Magazine

from the publishers of THE HINDU



Table of Contents REVIEW ARTICLE

The Partition of India

A.G. NOORANI

THE Partition of India ranks, beyond a doubt, as one of the 10 greatest tragedies in human history. It was not inevitable. India`s independence was inevitable; but preservation of its unity was a prize that, in our plural society, required high statesmanship. That was in short supply. A mix of other reasons deprived us of that prize - personal hubris, miscalculation, and narrowness of outlook.

While Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League bear heavy responsibility - since they demanded and pressed for Pakistan - the Congress cannot escape blame. Least of all the hypocritical Sangh Parivar. Its chief mentor V.D. Savarkar formulated the two-nation theory in his essay Hindutva, published in 1923, 16 years before Jinnah came up with it. The Hindu Mahasabha leader Lala Lajpat Rai wrote in The Tribune of December 14, 1924:

``Under my scheme the Muslims will have four Muslim States: (1) The Pathan Province or the North-West Frontier; (2) Western Punjab (3) Sindh and (4) Eastern Bengal. If there are compact Muslim communities in any other part of India, sufficiently large to form a province, they should be similarly constituted. But it should be distinctly understood that this is not a united India. It means a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Mulsim India.`` This was 16 years before the League adopted the Pakistan Resolution in Lahore, on March 23, 1940 (emphasis added, throughout). Prof. Muhammad Aslam Malik claims: ``The present study concentrates only on how the resolution was shaped. It deals with the subject exhaustively and explains some of the intriguing questions objectively... Nevertheless, it is not the last word on the subject.`` This stroke of modesty is preceded by a sustained belittling of all others who wrote on the subject. In bringing to light important archival material, the author renders high service. In proceeding to analyse them, however, he only amuses the reader when his aim, apparently, is to enlighten him. One who can confidently assert that B. Shiva Rao was ``the proprietor of The Hindu``, that the hill-station Matheran, which Jinnah loved, was an ``island``, and that Sir Chimanlal Setalvad was a Parsi, can assert anything. He draws freely on his imagination. ``It can be imagined that Jinnah would have agreed to favour Sir Sikandar only when the latter agreed to support the League`s Pakistan proposition, which he had vehemently opposed at the Delhi meeting of the Working Committee. It can also be visualised that, for the sake of saving his face, Sikandar should have demanded the inclusion of some of his suggestions in the `outline`...``

The author is out to prove a thesis which some people in India also espouse - Jinnah was for Partition from the mid-1930s and the Lahore Resolution was not a bargaining counter. He thinks that his leader is belittled if the contrary is averred. One is reminded of the judge who said ``this court may often be in error, but it is never in doubt.``

There were four forces at work then. The historians of the Hindu Right, R.C. Majumdar and A.K. Majumdar, refer in Struggle for Freedom (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; 1969; page 611) ``to one factor which was responsible to a very large extent for the emergence of the idea of Partition of India on communal lines. This was the Hindu Mahasabha...`` Recently, the veteran socialist Prem Bhasin wrote: ``The ease with which a large number of Congressmen and women - small, big and bigger still - have walked into the RSS-BJP boat and sailed with it is not a matter of surprise. For, there has always been a certain affinity between the two. A large and influential section in the Congress sincerely believed even during the freedom struggle that the interests of Hindu Indians could not be sacrificed at the altar of a united Independent India. Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and Lala Lajpat Rai had, for instance, actually broken away from the Congress and founded the Nationalist Party which contested elections against the Congress in the mid-twenties`` (Janata; Annual Number, 1998). G.B. Pant was the architect of the Ayodhya problem.

Gandhi and Nehru opposed such elements doggedly, but they were not prepared to relent on their preference for a centralised federation. Meanwhile, the Muslim Right had begun to play with the Partition idea since Iqbal`s famous address to the League session in 1931. But his group of Muslim provinces was confined to western India as a member of the Indian Union. Jinnah did not subscribe to such schemes. He was a belated convert and for tactical reasons.

Both the Congress and the League were opposed to the federal part of the Government of India, 1935. Nehru wrote to Rajendra Prasad on July 21, 1937: ``During the General Election in U.P. there was not any conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League. It was the decision of both the parties to avoid conflict as much as possible and to accommodate each other.`` In October 1937, the League adopted as its objective complete independence and became a mass party. That that round of the Congress-League parleys for coalition failed was bad enough. Far worse, as Tej Bahadur Sapru wrote to Shiva Rao, was the behaviour of Congress Ministries. Jinnah`s talks with Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose failed dismally. The Congress took a fateful step. It began advocating the establishment of a Constituent Assembly as a solution to the problem. As K.M. Panikkar pointed out in a brilliant memorandum, dated October 10, 1945, no such Assembly can succeed except on the basis of a Congress-League accord and unless ``a procedure of bringing the parties together on some minimum basis of agreement is evolved before the Constituent Assembly meets.``

In 1939 the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, asked Jinnah whether he had ``a constructive policy``, any alternative to the Assembly which Jinnah dreaded because he was certain to be outvoted there. The Viceroy invited Jinnah for talks on March 2, 1939. In these talks, Jinnah, despite his opposition to federation, presented his conditions for accepting it. He told the Viceroy that ``the only form of federation which would appeal to him would be one that contained what he described as an equipoise.`` By this he meant, as Jinnah himself explained, ``an adjustment of votes and of territorial division which would give a Hindu-Muslim balance.`` He added that this equipoise was to be ``obtained by a certain degree of gerrymandering`` - weightage of votes or seats. Various variants of the Pakistan scheme were then under active consideration within the Muslim League. The Premier of Punjab Sir Sikander Hayat Khan`s scheme sought the division of India into autonomous ``zones`` within a federal India.

The League appointed two bodies. A foreign committee was set up in December 1938 and a constitutional subcommittee was set up in March 1939. Authors of the various schemes cooperated with both. Jinnah ``told the Muslim League Council, on April 8, 1939, `There were several schemes in the field including that of dividing the country into Muslim and Hindu India`, but the (Sub) Committee was not pledged to any particular scheme.``

On September 11, 1939, the Viceroy announced suspension of the federal part of the Act. Jinnah, true to form, kept his counsel to himself. For the first time he propounded the theory that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations in India. In an article in the journal Time and Tide of London (January 19, 1940) Jinnah asserted that ``there are in India two nations, who both must share the governance of their common motherland``. This implied clearly a pact to govern a united India. The theory was aimed at asserting a claim to equality in standing. Only two months later in Lahore on March 23, 1940 the Muslim League demanded Partition in a Resolution which did not mention the two-nation theory at all. The omission is all the more remarkable for the fact that the theory very much figured in the Resolution adopted by the League`s Working Committee on February 6, 1940. Its five points provided ``the outline`` of the Pakistan proposal.

It was based on draft prepared by the Foreign Committee on February 1, 1940 at a meeting with the authors of schemes. The Constitutional Sub-Committee had apparently gone into hibernation. The text of the League`s draft is appended to the book (Appendix C). When Jinnah met the Viceroy on February 6 he argued that ``he and his friends were disposed, on the whole, to take the view that to publish in full their fundamental opinion as to the constructive steps to be taken for the future, would at this stage, from their standpoint, be inadvisable since it would needlessly expose surface (sic) to criticism``. But Linlithgow pressed him to provide his alternative scheme.

THE League`s historic Lahore session met in Lahore on March 21. The next day proved crucial as the Working Committee deliberated on the Pakistan resolution. The first preliminary draft, which the Subjects Committee discussed on March 23 for adoption by the session in the plenary, provided for an All-India Centre. The provisions read thus: ``(e) That the regions may, in turn, delegate to a Central agency, which for the convenience may be designated the Grand Council of the United Dominions of India, and on such terms as may be agreed upon, provided that such functions shall be administered through Committee on which all regions (dominions) and interests will be duly represented and their actual administration will be entrusted to the Units. (f) That no decision of this Central Agency will be effective or operative unless it is carried by at least a two-thirds majority. (g) That in the absence of agreement with regard to the constitution, functions and scope of the Grand Council of the United Dominions of India, cited above, the regions (dominions), (9) shall have the right to refrain from or refuse to participate in the proposed Central structure... (i) That the peace-time composition of the Indian Army shall continue on the same bases as existed on the 1st April, 1937.`` (Appendix D).

The author need not have lost himself in reverie, as he does on the fate of this draft. He should have consulted Evolution of Pakistan edited by Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada (Royal Book Co, Karachi; 1995). He has reproduced in facsimile the draft prepared by Sir Sikandar with corrections therein by Jinnah, Malik Barkat Ali, an opponent of Sikandar, and others. There is a bracket suggesting omission of clauses (e) (f) and (g) concerning the Centre.

This explains Sikandar`s speech in the Punjab Assembly on March 11, 1941. ``I have no hesitation in admitting that I was responsible for drafting the original Resolution. But let me make it clear that the Resolution which I drafted was radically amended by the Working Committee, and there is a wide divergence between the Resolution I drafted and the one that was finally passed. The main difference between the two Resolutions is that the latter part of my Resolution, which related to the Centre and coordination of the activities of the various units, was eliminated.`` He, however, continued to remain a Leaguer.

But the Resolution as adopted contained a significant paragraph at the end. ``This session further authorises the Working Comm-ittee to frame a scheme of constitution in accordance with these basic principles, providing for the assumption finally by the respective regions of all powers such as defence, external affairs, communication, customs and such other matters as may be necessary.`` In his masterpiece Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar reproached Gandhi for not putting searching questions to Jinnah on the text when they met in 1944. ``What does the word `finally`, which occurs in the last para of the Lahore Resolution, mean? Did the League contemplate a transition period in which Pakistan will not be an independent and sovereign State?`` (page 411)

Ayesha Jalal holds: ``By apparently repudiating the need for any centre, and keeping quiet about its shape, Jinnah calculated that when eventually the time came to discuss an all-India federation, British and Congress alike would be forced to negotiate with organised Muslim opinion, and would be ready to make substantial concessions to create or retain that centre. The Lahore resolution should therefore be seen as a bargaining counter, which had the merit of being acceptable (on the face of it) to the majority-province Muslims, and of being totally unacceptable to the Congress and in the last resort to the British also. This, in turn, provided the best insurance that the League would not be given what it now apparently was asking for, but which Jinnah in fact did not really want`` (The Sole Spokesman; page 57).

Meanwhile, the Foreign Committee soldiered along to produce the ``scheme of constitution`` promised in the last para and submitted its Report dated December 23, 1940 to Jinnah. It said:

``The Lahore resolution of the League does not look forward to the proposed regional states assuming immediately, as they are formed, powers of defence, external affairs, communication, customs, etc. This argues that there should be a transitional stage during which these powers should be exercised by some agency common to them all...

Jinnah disowned it and even repudiated the Committee`s locus standi. (For the text of the Report vide The Pakistan Issue edited by Nawab Nazir Yar Jang Bahadur; Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore; 1943; pp 73-92). It was not unanimous. A leak to the press created a sharp controversy. But these lines in the Report showed keen perception: ``A common coordinating agency would be necessary...; for, under the third principle of the Resolution, it will be impossible to implement effectively the provisions of safeguards for minorities without some organic relationship subsisting between the States... an agreed formula has to be devised whereby the Muslims shall share the control at the Centre on terms of perfect equality with the non-Muslims`` (page 88). In plain words, Pakistan would spell the ruin of Indian Muslims unless it had an ``organic relationship`` with the rest of India.

Jinnah did not wish publicly to concede a Centre. Confident of his tactical skills, not unjustifiably, he thought he would, when the chips were down, ``pull it off``. He miscalculated. The Congress was not interested in sharing power. His abrasive rhetoric impaired his credentials as an interlocutor. Nehru wrote in his jail diary on December 28, 1943: ``Instinctively I think it is better to have Pakistan or almost nothing if only to keep Jinnah far away and not allow his muddled and arrogant head from (sic) interfering continually in India`s progress`` (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru; First Series; Vol.13; page 324). He accurately predicted: ``I cannot help thinking that ultimately the Muslims of India will suffer most`` (ibid; page 24).

That Jinnah`s adherence to the Resolution of March 23, 1940, with its tantalising last para, was tentative emerges clearly from a consistent record of concessions on his part. Muslim leaders in U.P. like Chaudhury Khaliquzzaman and the Nawab of Chhatari expressed disquiet. On October 22, 1940, Jinnah asked Chhatari to come out ``with a definite scheme of his own`` and promised that he would bear that scheme in mind while making a final decision in this regard (page 200). Chhatari suggested that ``We must get as many Hindus out of the Congress as possible to join hands with us``. His suggestion clearly implied establishment of an all-India federation. The League was not unanimous on Pakistan even after the Lahore resolution.

Chundrigar, a Leaguer close to Jinnah, told H.V. Hodson, the Reforms Commissioner, in April 1940 that the object of the Lahore Resolution was not to create ``Ulsters`` but to achieve ``two nations... welded into united India on the basis of equality``. It was, he added, an alternative to majority rule; not a bid to destroy India`s unity. Jinnah himself told Nawab Mohammed Ismail Khan, one of the few who thought for himself, in November 1941, that he could not come out with these truths ``because it is likely to be misunderstood especially at present``. But, ``I think Mr. Hodson finally understands as to what our demand is``. Hodson regarded it as a bid for a set-up on ``equal terms`` motivated by the fear that Muslims might be reduced to being ``a Cindrella with trade union rights and a radio in the kitchen but still below stairs.``

UNFORTUNATELY, the author`s work does not take note of Prof. R.J. Moore`s work Endgame of Empire published in 1983, in which he refers to a file in the Jinnah Papers in the Government of Pakistan`s archives containing his correspondence with Cripps in 1942 on ``the creation of a new Indian Union``. Significantly it is still embargoed.

Jinnah emerged from the polls in 1946 with his representative status established. At his very first meeting with the British Cabinet Mission on April 4, 1946, he demanded Partition; but only to concede foreign affairs, defence and communication to the centre.

On April 25, 1946, he was offered two alternatives - the Pakistan as it came to be established in 1947 and an Indian Union superimposed on groups of Muslim provinces. Jinnah rejected the first and said he would consider the second if Congress did the same. His own proposals of May 12, 1946 envisaged, not Pakistan, but a confederation. If pressed he would have accepted a federation. He did so. He accepted the Mission`s Plan.

The Mission propounded its plan on May 16, 1946 rejecting Pakistan and plumping instead for a Union confined to defence, foreign affairs and communication and based on three groups of provinces. It was, an ``organic`` union with enormous potential for growth.

Jinnah accepted it. Gandhi condemned grouping immediately and persisted in the opposition till the end. The Congress professed to accept the plan but so quibbled on grouping as to wreck the proposals.

THE Cabinet Mission`s plan of May 16, 1946, envisaged an Indian federation based on three groups of provinces. The provinces were free to secede from the groups in which they were placed by a vote in the first general election after the scheme took effect. But they could not secede from the Union. India`s unity was preserved. All they could ask for was ``reconsideration of the terms of the Constitution`` - a Sarkaria Commission - after 10 years and no more. It would have been open to provinces of Group A (the States which now form the Union of India) to confer on the Union voluntarily subjects beyond the minimum subjects of defence, foreign affairs and communication. Group B comprised Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the NWFP. Far from establishing a ``weak`` Centre, it would have yielded a strong centre for India of today in a federal union with Pakistan, in which India though had a majority, though confined to defence, foreign affairs and communication.

The plan broke down because the Congress refused to accept this grouping formula. It had 207 members in the Constituent Assembly against 73 of the League. In the crucial Group C, comprising Bengal and Assam, it had 32 members against 36 of the League, in a House of 70, with two Independents. Since the League would have had to provide a chairman to work the group, it would have been left with 35 members against 32 of the Congress. How could the League possibly have prevented Assam`s secession? Yet it was this bogey which destroyed the last best chance for preserving India`s unity.

As late as March 19, 1947 - less than three months before the Partition plan - the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, wrote to the Secretary of State for India, Pethick-Lawrence, that, having met Jinnah recently, Colin Reid, correspondent of The Daily Telegraph ``got the impression that he might accept the Cabinet Mission`s plan if the Congress accepted it in unequivocal terms``. Mountbatten tried to secure that and failed. The Congress preferred India`s partition to sharing power with the League in a united India.

In an interview with Jalal in 1980, a Punjab League leader, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, said that Jinnah never wanted a Pakistan which involved the Partition of India and was all in favour of the Mission`s proposals. The Cabinet Mission`s Plan was wrecked by the Congress as Chimanlal Setalvad rightly held.

The Congress was not consistent on the Partition. On April 2, 1942, the Congress Working Committee criticised the secessionist idea - only to add: ``Nevertheless, the Committee cannot think in terms of compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in the Indian Union against their declared and established will...`` Its election manifesto of 1945 reiterated this principle, thus setting at naught the Jagat Narain Lal resolution, adopted by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) on May 2, 1942, which ruled out ``liberty to any component State or territorial unit to secede.``

Rajaji`s formula, in March 1944, accepted plebiscite on Partition in areas ``wherein the Muslim population is in absolute majority.`` On September 24, 1944 Gandhi himself offered Jinnah his plan for ``two sovereign independent States`` with a Treaty of Separation on defence, foreign affairs, etc. Thus, from 1940 onwards, the trend was unmistakably against India`s unity. Both Gandhi and the Congress had accepted the principle of Partition, based on consent of the areas concerned. Time was fast running out on India`s unity.

THE British government`s statement on December 6, 1946 rejected the Congress interpretation of the grouping formula and ended with these words: ``There has never been any prospect of success for the Constituent Assembly except upon the basis of the agreed procedure. Should a Constitution come to be framed by the Constituent Assembly in which a large section of the Indian population had not been represented, His Majesty`s Government could not, of course, contemplate - as the Congress have stated they would not contemplate - forcing such a Constitution upon any unwilling parts of the country.`` This gave the Congress one of two choices - unqualified acceptance of the Mission`s Plan or Partition. It preferred the latter. Once again, Gandhi rejected the Plan. He advised Assam not to join the Group (c) with Bengal, retire from the Constituent Assembly and frame its own constitution. ``Each unit must be able to decide and act for itself`` (Harijan, December 29, 1946).

Richard Symonds describes graphically the havoc that followed Partition. He was a relief worker among the refugees when the massacres took place in Punjab at Independence. Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, academics at the University of Singapore, describe the aftermath and its lasting impact on Punjab, especially on Sikhs. The opening chapter on ``the celebration of independence`` in both countries is, like the rest of the scholarly work, excellently documented. Their comments on Radcliffe`s work are devastating. ``The Radcliffe Award for the Punjab, a six-paragraph document describing the dividing line between the east and west of the province, `wobbled from communal to economic to strategic factors`, followed no natural dividing features such as rivers or mountain ranges, cut across villages, canal systems and communication lines, in the process separating communities and bisecting homes. Large populations of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs found themselves on the wrong side of the border. It was the same for Bengal, where the boundary created large pockets of minorities in East Pakistan as well as West Bengal. Its impact was tremendous, and the trauma of Partition has left an indelible mark not only on Indo-Pakistan relations but upon the lives of millions of Indians and Pakistanis.``

The last chapter is on ``the legacies of Partition``. They write: ``Since the late 1940s Muslim political leaders have realized that `partition proved positively injurious to the Muslims of India, and on a long term basis for Muslims everywhere`. However, since the 1980s, the community has faced new challenge to its political status as political parties, raising the banner of Hindu majoritarian cultural nationalism, have questioned the very basis of India`s secularism. The Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Mosque controversy and the larger, continuing mobilization for Hindutva have profound implications for the future of the community, as several scholarly studies have shown.``

The Sangh Parivar`s ancestors existed even in the 19th century as Joya Chatterjee`s superb work Bengal Divided (1995) establishes. Partition weakened the cause of secularism in India and all but destroyed it in Pakistan.



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Reply #: 13

babu

All your assertions about RIGHTS of U.S.A. are right

But only if USA had kept itself on the western shores of Atlantic & eastern shores of Pacific.

When U.S.A. ventures out to form relation ship with any other country & expects to be taken seriously as a BIG brother it is a member of the community , NOT an island

Your Rights can only be right ,if U.S.A. were an island which like any human it isnt.

Yes, legally you may deny food to your neighbour claiming police protection while you Eat & rest starve .

BUT ARE WE TALKING JUST OF LEGALITY OR HUMANISM,RELIGION(ANY),COMMUNITY,SOCIETY,HUMAN RIGHTS.......?????????????????????????????????

Some food for thought for muslims & munafiques alike.

_________________________________________________

Islam

Let us now examine Islam. Why is lslam so astonishingly successful? Why is it resistant to secularization? I shall begin by offering a model of what traditional Islam was like (without going into the early History of Islam). To put it simply, Islam, at least that of the arid zone between the Hindu Kush and the Atlantic and the Niger bend, was divided between a high culture and a low culture - a high Islam and a low Islam - and these two coexisted in an unstable way. Most of the time they were peaceful, but nevertheless had conflicts at fairly regular intervals. The chief difference between the two is that high Islam does not permit mediators (it has a special name for the sin of mediation: Shirk), while the world of low Islam is full of them. High Islam encourages a direct relationship between a unique deity and the individual believer; it is not attached to ritual, contains little magic and supernatural belief, and is heavily moralistic, scripturalist, puritan, monotheistic and individualistic. It is the Islam of the scholars - the high Islam recognized as valid by the believers but not practiced by them. It is not practiced because it does not correspond to the needs of the lower classes and above all the rural Muslims, who for obvious reasons require a much more Durkheimian religion - i.e., a religion in which the sacred has its mediators, its incarnation, and which mirrors the social structure. Most of the rural Muslims were encadrés, incorporated in rural autonomous or semi-autonomous congregations, village lineages, tribes, clans and the like. For their internal organization and life they had a Durkheimian religion where the sacred is incarnated in periodic rituals, in sacred objects, sacred practices, sacred persons. One can say that an upper-class, urban, individualistic, puritan, ``protestant`` Islam (which is strangely united by the theologians and jurists who are its main carriers, despite the lack of a central organization and any kind of central secretariats and hierarchy) coexisted with a fragmented, ``catholic`` Islam which had the ``catholic`` characteristics of hierarchy, ritualization, employment of the sensuous forms of religion, of mystical exercises etc. One can see how this fits well with Durkheim`s theories of religion having the function of underwriting, rendering visible, and legitimating the communal organization in which Muslims lived. During periodic attempts of self-reformation these two forms came into conflict, but most of the time they coexisted harmoniously. On this issue I agree with the theory best formulated by David Hume about the oscillation in the religious life of mankind between protestant-type and catholic-type religions. In periodic outbursts of zeal and self-reformation the puritans would temporarily prevail, but the exigence and the demands of social life would again lead to a swing-back to a personalized, hierarchical, ritualized, non-scriptual religion with an ethic of loyalty rather than an ethic of rules. Thus Islam existed in a permanent oscillation between unsuccessful reformations and reversions to the old cultural habits. And, of course, there is a specific difference between Islam and West-European Christianity in this matter: in Western Europe the hierarchical, ritualized loyalty-ethics is at the center and carried by an institution rather than by abstract doctrine, while the individualist, scripturalist, puritan version is fragmented and relatively marginal. In Islam it is the other way around; the central tradition is individualist and scriptual, and the fragmented deviationists are hierarchical, ritualistic, etc. - a kind of mirror image.

As far as I can see there is nothing to stop Islam oscillating between these two forms. The oscillation was noted by the superb Muslim sociologist lbn Khaldun around 1400, and echoed by Friedrich Engels in a passage where he obviously uses lbn Khaldun without actually quoting him. He says‹contradicting the main thesis of Marxism - that all classes and class-societies are inherently unstable and due for internal destruction through their internal contradictions. In this passage the dreadful ethnocentrism of the two founding fathers of Marxism comes out as he specifies that the instability of classes and class-societies applies to ``us`` Europeans, whereas ``those`` Orientals, especially Arabs and Muslims, are locked in a kind of cyclical world which never manages to break out. And, admittedly, our social conflicts are distorted through the prism of religious language, but at least when the religious conflict is over something new emerges and we reach a higher level. All the orientals do is go around in a circle.

My theory of why Muslim fundamentalism has the astonishing strength that it does is the following: modern conditions unhinged the pendulum of this unstable oscillation and permanently and definitively shifted the center of gravity away from the pluralistic, hierarchical, organizational, Durkheimian style to that of high Islam. Of course, the reason why this happened is that the process of modernization, the political and economic centralization employed by the colonial and post-colonial states destroyed those communities that had provided the basis for the Durkheimian or low culture style of Islam. By turning clansmen, lineage members, villagers, and tribesmen into labor migrants and shantytown dwellers, it atomized the population and prompted them to find their identity in a high religion, in a high culture, that provides an identity shared by all Muslims, uniting them against the outsiders. Previously there did not exist a national identity in Muslim countries. Most people were first and foremost members of a local community under a local authority. Modern Muslim nations, especially in ex-colonial countries, are simply the summation of Muslims in a given territory. But this does mean that lslam provided the identification against the other.

It provided a ratification of their transition from a rural to an urban world, and it provided an idiom for expressing their change of status from that of rustic ignoramuses to people aspiring to urban sophistication. It also provided them - as is presently visible in the bitter and tragic conflict in Algeria - with a means of criticising their current rulers. It provided an idiom for those non-westernized people who take their Islam seriously, as against the technocrat Mamlukes