Episodes
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Recently I organised a twitter space to discuss alleged Indian interference in Maldives with Ahmed Azaan, a journalist from Maldives. This is a copy of that discussion.
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I caught up with SDPI's Karnataka State President, Abdul Majeed, via twitter space and this is the recording of that space. We discussed topics ranging from Anti-Hijab row in the state to what should be the electoral roadmap for Muslim community of the state.
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Episodes manquant?
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I recently hosted a space where my guest speaker and I discussed Australian Immigration System, it was a generic discussion ranging from how Australian in the recent past treated refugees who attempted to seek asylum but had come by boats to how both parties Liberals and Labour despite promising reforms in Parent visas, did not deliver substantive change in that aspect.
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Earlier this week I organised a twitter space with Uyghur Activist Arslan Hidayat to discuss the ongoing persecution of Uyghur Muslims in East Turkistan and this is a recording of that space.
P.S: East Turkistan is also known as Xinjiang -
Hi Everyone, so Today, I wanna talk about Vania Shaikh, a female dental student, a Muslim in India who was allegedly sexually harassed by a Hindu man, according to some reports on social media, Vania in fact protested against this harassment, however, she was allegedly physically assaulted for protesting by her abuser. This then led to vania committing suicide at her university or college campus.
Now, before we get into how the Indian authorities are responding or not responding to this case or how Indian media is covering or not covering this story, I just wanna call out that anytime Muslims are persecuted anywhere in the world, be it in the east or the west, the usual narrative that is pushed is âhuman rightsâ or âwomenâs rightsâ or âletâs save Muslim women from Muslim menâ. We saw this when Afghanistan was invaded, we saw this when Iraq was invaded, we saw this when the occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq was justified.
When it comes to India, Muslims have been facing persecution since Britainâs colonisation of the sub-continent, however, it became really intense pretty much since 1947, which is the year when India got its independence. Since 1947, Muslims in India have faced numerous massacres, pogroms and riots and in each of these scenarios Muslim women were specifically targeted by the perpetrators of violence.
In light of this, Iâd like to argue that the reason Muslim women face these atrocities is because the oppressors who in my opinion are filled with Anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia, want to humiliate Muslim men and this is not just applicable to India, but if you notice, this theory of mine can be applied to western liberal societies as well, where Muslim women are consistently demonised or in some cases even criminalised for their clothing. I think itâs very clear that these Anti-Muslim Islamophobes know that us Muslim men are very protective of our women and therefore, these people target our women to get to us or humiliate us.
So letâs go back to India, where not long ago we saw how Muslim girls in the southern Indian state of Karnataka were targeted for wearing Hijab, they were barred from attending school, those girls then went to Karnataka High Court, which delivered a judgement barring Hijab, then they went to Supreme Court of India, which then delivered a split judgement meaning Hijab remains banned in those colleges of Karnataka even today. We also saw how recently convicted rapists of Bilkis Bano, a victim of Gujrat riots were released based on good behaviour. I meanâŠhow can convicted rapists be released on good behaviour grounds? Not just this, but there is also consistent rhetoric from Hindu saints in India where they are riling up Hindu men to go after or target Muslim women.
In all of this, Muslims of India remain hopeful in the sense they still rely on their law enforcement agencies to potentially take action against these perpetrators, they still on their justice system to do the right thing. But in my opinion both Indian law enforcement and the justice system has failed Muslims of India not just once but over and over and over again. This then makes me that this is a systemâs failure, that this is a systematic failure which the Indian Muslim leadership to a large extent still refuses to acknowledge.
Now coming back to Vania Shaikh, I think this crime stems from the fact that Hindu men in India are emboldened to go after and target Muslim women, because they know that they enjoy the immunity from the system that released rapists of Bilkis Bano on good behavioural grounds. So I absolutely think it is the liberal, secular system that is responsible for Muslim women being targeted without any consequences and I do not think that it is only one political party that is responsible for this, I think the silence from most other âsecularâ parties in India on th
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Once again we witness violence against Palestinians living in Gaza being unleashed by Israel with little no push back from the world powers. I talk about it in this episode of mine
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This is my take on the current Anti-Hijab Row in the state of Karnataka, India. This episode is primarily in Urdu with few words of English.
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India these days have become an epicentre of Islamaphobia and Anti-Muslim hatred. In the latest fiasco, Muslim women are being targeted in India for their clothing.
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In this episode I talk about why it's a simplistic and a very naive argument to say that if the current government of India loses next elections then everything will be hunky dory for Muslims of India.
In this episode, I list various events, where Muslims were the victims and these events took place under various regimes. -
Disclaimer: This podcast contains details of some of the atrocities and violence committed against Muslims of India.
In this episode I talk about how I feel about the persecution of Muslims in India. -
Warning:
The content of this podcast might be distressing, it contains details of an atrocious crime that occurred in India.
So today, I am going to talk about this case from India, where a 21 old year old girl, who was a civil defence employee in Delhi, which is Indiaâs capital was abducted, brutally assaulted. -
Today I wanna talk about my heritage and the country where my parents come from and some of the issues that that country is facing and how people of my faith are being marginalised, so I will start by saying, I have always had this love-hate relationship with my heritage, on one side I loved my ancestry for things like food, culture, history and on the other side I hated the fact that people who had the same heritage or background as mine - not always, but often, at least in my personal experience, tend to be nosy, gossipy, materialistic and very set in their ways.
Therefore, very early on in my life I subconsciously developed pre-conceived notions about people who looked like me, but had an accent. When I think about it now retrospectively, as they say hindsight is 20/20, I think, for the longest time, I subconsciously refrained from getting too close to or befriend people from the sub-continent, of course my parents had Indian heritage but to me it was not their defining feature, they were just my parents who spoke with an accent and had materialistic tendencies.
However, lately, I have been reading up and researching the persecution faced by people like my parents and grandparents in their countries for simply being who they were and the faith they subscribed to. The persecution appears to continue even today. Every other day on twitter one sees videos from India, where a Muslim man is lynched or beaten for simply being Muslim. There are open calls being made in India on a regular basis by right wing nationalists for businesses owned by Muslims, Muslim tradesmen, Muslim craftsmen to be boycotted, needless to say this is heartbreaking.
Amidst this sad reality of India, going from being the âworldâs largest democracyâ to an oppressive state, there is a ray of hope â Indiaâs Muslims on social media platforms. The current generation of Indian Muslims who have access to social media arenât just educated but are also opinionated, articulate, tech savvy and in many ways have the skills to counter the Islamaphobia machinery that seeks to threaten their very existence. In the last couple of months, I have had the opportunity to interact with some of these people and I must admit I was a bit nervous at first to interact with them, because I did not necessarily have an in-depth understanding of Indian or for that matter Sub-Continentâs political landscape. It would be an understatement to say that these people were more than welcoming and gracious to me.
I started my interactions with an open mind, I wanted to learn more about the people of a country that my parents came from, where my ancestors lived, I wanted to understand how these people feel and think about their current political climate where their peers from the majority community demonise them on a recurring basis. Through these interactions I learnt that these people want nothing more than to live in peace and harmony in their own country, they are not demanding or seeking anything that isnât already granted to them by the Indian constitution in theory, all they want is that these rights which are guaranteed to them by their countryâs constitution to translate into ground reality, whereby they can focus on real issues of education, jobs and careers rather than justify their existence every single day.
One of the by-products of these interactions, is that I have more empathy for my folks now, now I understand why at times they might have come across as materialistic, now I appreciate the fact that they come from a country where they might have been subjected to these micro aggressions and when you have lived or live in a society where you have to substantiate your very existence on a regular basis â tangible, materialistic things become important to you, as these give you a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement.
Without going on a philosophical tangent, I would say this - the last two months have been an eye-opening&
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Almost 20 years ago, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban, as a response to horrific and brutal 9/11 terroristsâ attacks against the United States in 2001. Over the years we in the west were told that the country, Afghanistan, was making and had made significant progress in terms of education and womenâs rights, we were told that Afghanistan now had a functioning democracy and although somewhat nascent, the U.S and its allies had helped build an Afghan Defence Force that could face off much of the threat posed by a potential Taliban insurgency. Even recently, on the 8 July 2021 in a briefing when the current President of the United States, Joe Biden, was asked if a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was inevitable, Biden responded with âthe Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped- as well equipped as any army in the world â and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitableâ. In the same briefing Biden also remarked âI trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- â more competent in terms of conducting warâ.
It has been a few days now that Taliban has taken over Afghanistan, including its capital Kabul- except the Afghan International Airport, which is supposedly under the control of U.S forces, however, âcontrolâ might not be the word one would use to describe the chaotic scenes that are emerging from Kabulâs airport, videos of which have been been widely shared on social media platforms, showing Afghan men in their traditional attire, in hundreds, running after a moving U.S Airforce Plane, attempting to board the plane en route to who knows where, subsequent video clips showed that at least two men who clung to the aircraft fell from an altitude that would make survival less likely.
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Before pandemic without restrictions or lockdowns, I rarely paid any attention to the rabbit hole that is reality television. I had watched a few episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, very early on, in 2009 or 2010 and decided it was not for me, but every now and then read about them and admired their brilliant marketing and public relationsâ strategies.
However, since the lockdowns and restrictions, it is a whole new world and clearly, I am living a different life, wherein reality television makes up a big portion of my source of entertainment besides news about protests by anti-vaxxers, I must admit anti-vaxxers protesting and shouting âFreedomâ is the funniest thing that one could ever watch. Anyway, coming back to the topic at hand, reality television, no doubt it is soul sucking, but very addictive at the same time.
Two years ago, had someone told me that I would one day watch shows like Shahs of Sunset, Million Dollar Listings New York, Los Angeles, Married to Medicine, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and not to forget Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, I would have thought that that someone was either insane or was on the verge of insanity, but here I am, amidst a pandemic, watching all these shows on a repeat on my tablet, whilst the news plays on TV.
I am sure it is an open secret that these shows may or may not be staged, I am not saying these are scripted shows, but more like staged, where the cast mates are pushed to go in a certain direction by their producers, in order to produce enticing content and to hook the audience in on their drama. Also, can we be honest and talk about the lifestyle that is shown in these ârealityâ shows? The costumes, the mansions, the dinners, the shopping sprees, the parties, the cars, are you kidding me? I do not and cannot believe that this is their real life!
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First topic that I want to discuss is, Emmanuel Macron, the President of French Republic, claims to be a champion of free speech, in an interview to Al Jazeera in October 2020, he had said âI will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to drawâ. There is no doubt that some truly condemnable and atrocious incidents took place in France in the name of religion and one might even be sympathetic to Macronâs rallying against elements of French society that may have sought to undermine the very noble principle of free speech, except, Macronâs hypocrisy seems to know no bounds when it comes to not practising what he preaches.
When talking about Macron, George Orwellâs 1984 and the phrase âDoublethinkâ comes to mind, in the novel this phrase meant the ability to hold two completely contradictory beliefs at the same time and to believe that they were both true. In Macronâs case, he somehow seems to believe that he could be a champion of Free Speech whilst actively undermining the very same principle that he publicly professes to hold so dear.
The other topic that I discuss is Syrian Civil War, the conflict in Syria started over 10 years ago resulting in millions of people being displaced and countless lives being lost. Most people across the globe have a very polarised view of the Syrian conflict, there are some who believe Bashar Al Assad is a monster and should be removed at any cost and then there are those who believe Syrian Civil War was and is Syriaâs internal matter and no external power should interfere in a sovereign countryâs internal matters. This polarisation gets even steep when it comes to the Muslim World, because most Muslims donât just see this as a conflict between a ruler and his subjects, to some Muslims it becomes a conflict between a Shiite dictator and an oppressed Sunni population and to other Muslims this becomes a clash between Saudi Inspired Wahhabi ideology and a Head of State who is trying to protect his diverse population from anarchy. -
I am a die-hard capitalist at heart, I love the concept of free-market economy, limited government and a thriving middle class that benefits from a fair and free market. However, lately, United States and its allies have been using the buzzwords like âProtection of Rules- Based International Orderâ, at times explicitly and sometimes implicitly to express the âchallengeâ that a strong China might pose to the liberal democracies and their âRules-Based International Orderâ- in place since post war era and often phrases like these are used in front of the media to convey how its crucial more than ever before for these countries to work together and face that âchallengeâ, united. In theory this sounds like a noble cause, for people like me who believe in capitalism, because after all, China is governed by a Communist regime that allows little to no room for values that these liberal democracies supposedly cherish the most, including free-market economy, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to peaceful assembly and freedom to practice religion or not.
However, in reality, most of these âliberal democraciesâ have their own issues with the values that they so profess to cherish, for example, United States and its allies have been critical of Chinaâs crackdown on freedom of speech, freedom of press and freedom of assembly in Hong Kong, whilst at the same time, Julian Assange, who exposed war crimes committed by some of these liberal democracies, currently languishes in a high security prison in the U.K and this prison has been known to have hosted terrorists. The United States along with its allies in June 2021 condemned Chinaâs treatment of its Uyghur population in Xinjiang, one of the signatories to this condemnation was Israel and it is widely known that there have been several United Nationsâ resolutions passed against Israel for its treatment of Palestinians that have been living under its occupation since 1967.
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from time to time, we, in the western liberal democracies, mostly with the best of intentions, from our ivory towers, pick sides rather easily when it comes to politics of Global South, without fully understanding the complexities.
Donât believe me? Think about the co-operation that took place between former dictator of Pakistan, Musharraf and the west in early to mid 2000s, he wasnât democratically elected, in fact he had ousted a democratically elected Prime Minister of his country in a coup de tat, and the west pretty much rolled out red carpets to him while he gave himself the title of âPresidentâ, think about how current dictator of Egypt, Sisi, who ousted a democratically elected politician, Morsi, now gets to shake hands with world leaders, clearly in both of these instances the liberal democracies chose to do business with dictators at the expense of our core values.
Therefore, in this blog, I am writing about the supposed political activists or leaders from the Global South that the west is currently siding with and why I think siding with these supposed activists or leaders might be a mistake.
Alexei Navalny:
Alexei Navalny, currently being hailed as a hero in the west, rose to prominence in Russia by his supposed expose of corruption in Kremlin. Although he ran for the office of mayor in Moscow, he lost. A lot of people in the west do not know that Navalny has never held a public office in Russia, in fact he started in politics as a member of Russian liberal party, Yabloko, only to be expelled from the party for his ânationalist activitiesâ.
Aung San Suu Kyi:
Prior to the events of 2017 in Myanmar, where its military according to credible international organisations allegedly committed a genocide, Aung San Suu Kyi was hailed as a hero across the globe, because she supposedly stood for Democracy and was even awarded Nobel Peace Prize amongst many other accolades. However, since August 2017, she has not only failed to denounce the crimes committed against Rohingyas but also defended Myanmarâs military in International Court of Justice.
Juan Guaido:
According to Sanctionskill.Org âGuaidĂł showed total unrestraint at the use of thug violence to meet his political goals. Before 2019, the only knowledge that the Venezuelan public had of him, outside of his constituency, was that he was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the violent roadblocks that took the country to the brink of civil war in 2017. Numerous photos showed GuaidĂł, grinning ear to ear, alongside armed fascists who were responsible for the deaths of over a hundred people.â
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Nizar Banat, a Palestinian activist, an outspoken critic of Palestinian Authority and its corruption, was murdered on the 24 June 2021, by the Palestinian Preventive Security force â policing arm of the Palestinian Authority, in the occupied West Bank. This isnât shocking to many who have studied Oslo Accords and have followed Israel-Palestine relationship/conflict over the years. It can be argued that Palestinian Authority since its inception, has acted similar to those âSlave Patrolsâ in the antebellum United States which were set up with enslaved African Americans to monitor and enforce discipline, at the behest of their white masters, upon their fellow enslaved African Americans.
The history of corruption within and by Palestinian Authority (PA) is well documented, recent instances of such corruption include - people in the occupied West Bank who were close to the inner sanctum of PA received COVID vaccines, at the expense of front-line health workers and other essential servicesâ workers, when there was a shortage of vaccines in general, then there was that scandal of salaries being paid to âemployeesâ of a non-existent Palestinian Airlines, but what often is not widely reported in the mainstream media is its history of collaborating with the State of Israel to suppress and crackdown on any dissent from the people it supposed governs, i.e., Palestinians.
Palestinians in a way face oppression from not only their occupier, but also from people who are supposed to govern them and when an activist like Nizar Banat comes along and openly challenges these corrupt authorities, in a civilised manner, they act with impunity and respond with brute force and violence. In the recent years PAâs dominance over occupied West Bank has been overshadowed by its decades long corruption and its perceived inability to act in a manner that would deliver Palestine its statehood, therefore, there is little doubt that Banatâs assassination wasnât motivated by political insecurity of Palestinian Authority.
The other not so surprising element of Banatâs assassination is its coverage by the mainstream western media, for example:
BBC reported, âProminent Abbas critic dies in PA Custody after âvicious beatingâ by officersâ
NBC referred to it as âOutspoken critic of Palestinian Authority Nizar Banat dies after violent arrestâ
DW News called it âPalestinian Authority critic Nizar Banat dies after arrestâ
The Times of Israel phrased it as âActivist critical of Palestinian Authority dies after arrestâ
The thing that is missing from all of these headlines is Banat just didnât die, he did not have a cardiac arrest, he did not have a stroke, he wasnât 100 years old and therefore did not âdieâ of aging. Banat was beaten mercilessly and allegedly with wooden and iron batons by the policing arm of Palestinian Authority, which has a history of violence against its own citizenry and Banat not only dared to speak out against the authority but also challenged them in the elections that were postponed indefinitely by Mahmoud Abbas, who has been the President of Palestinian Authority for over 16 years. Therefore, it can be argued that Banatâs death was an assassination.
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Last year when a BBC journalist while interviewing Azerbaijanâs President Ilham Aliyev, asked him about the restrictions on free press in his country, he rebuked the reporter and said âYou have no moral right to talk about free media when you do these thingsâ, by these things he meant treatment of Julian Assange by the U.K government.
Itâs been over two years now, since the London Metropolitan Police entered into Ecuadorian Embassy in London and arrested Assange and ever since then he has been languishing in U.Kâs high security Belmarsh Prison and many fear that this has taken a toll on his physical and mental health. Itâs really sad to see that there hasnât been a lot of mainstream media coverage of Assange and his current plight, but, hey what do you expect from media houses whose primary motive is to rake in big bucks. So, letâs talk about Assange and how he ended up where he is now.
So, if you remember, back in 2010, Assange and Wikileaks along with some major media outlets published 100s and 1000s of documents exposing potential war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq and subsequently in the same year they also published classified U.S embassiesâ cables that further embarrassed the U.S government. At the time, many in the U.S government claimed that these leaks would endanger the lives of its operatives on the ground and in the field, however, so far, there hasnât been any evidence to suggest that has indeed been the case.
Letâs take a look back at how some of the most powerful governments in the world went after Assange to appease the most powerful country in the world, and many may find it amusing that the reason initially Assange was arrested in the United Kingdom was not actually for his role in embarrassing the U.S government. So, why was he arrested, you ask? O.K let me take you down the memory lane.
In August 2010, the Swedish Prosecutor's Office issued an arrest warrant for Assange accusing him of sexual misconduct.
In December 2010 Assange was arrested in London based on the arrest warrant issued by the Swedish authorities
In May 2012 - The UK's Supreme Court ruled that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over the allegations of sexual misconduct, however, many including Assange feared that these accusations by Swedish authorities were in fact at the behest of United States and if Assange were to be extradited to Sweden, then he would most certainly end up in the U.S facing trumped up espionage charges.
Therefore, in June 2012, Assange violating his bail conditions, went to Ecuadorian Embassy in London and sought asylum. Subsequently, in August 2012, Ecuador granted him asylum on the grounds that his human rights might be violated if he was extradited.
In August 2015, Swedish authorities dropped their investigation into two allegations against Assange, one of sexual molestation and one of unlawful coercion, because they had run out of time to question him. But the more serious accusation of rape wasnât dropped until May 2017.
Between July 2018 and April 2019, many claim that under pressure from the U.S government the Ecuadorian government engaged in talks with the U.K government and finally in April 2019, The London Metropolitan Police entered the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested Assange for "failing to surrender to the court" over a warrant issued in 2012. In May 2019, Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail conditions from 2012.
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I was scrolling through my twitter feed and came across tweets where some (not all) American progressives were quoting their intelligence community to demonstrate how bad the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, was. The irony of these tweets isnât lost on anyone. I was a child when America declared its war on terror and subsequently invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. At the time, I barely knew anything about the global geo-politics, but since then I would like to believe that I have learnt a fair-few things and I believe that although America was justified in invading Afghanistan, it should have left soon after neutralising the people who were responsible for 9/11. On the other hand, I do not believe Invasion of Iraq was justified at all, I know some people would say hindsight is 20/20, but if one recalls, there were people even back in 2002, 2003 who opposed the invasion of Iraq and in fact took to the streets to register their dissent against this invasion.
If you remember, America under the Presidency of George W. Bush made a case for invasion of Iraq citing intelligence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), since there were no WMDs found post invasion, many blamed the Bush administration for spinning the intelligence to persuade public opinion in favour of the war. However, on the 22 March 2019, almost 16 years after invasion of Iraq, an American journalist, Glenn Kessler in a Washington Post article titled âThe Iraq War and WMDs: An intelligence failure or White House Spin?â, with regards to assertions by the Bush administration regarding Saddamâs nuclear capabilities concluded:
âStatements by the president, vice president, secretary of state and the national security advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by the intelligence community, but did not convey the substantial disagreementsâAlso, if you remember, on the 5 February 2003, the then U.S Secretary of States, Colin Powell, delivered a presentation to the United Nations and on slide 20 of that presentation there were drawn up graphics or visuals showing how Iraq had the capability of producing biological weapons using something called âMobile Production Facilities For Biological Agentsâ, and in these imaginary drawings, a twelve wheeler truck was depicted carrying some water tanks, that according to Powell could carry biological agents. With regards to these assertions by the Bush administration, Kessler states in the same article:
âStatements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraqâs possession of biological agents, weapons, production capability and use of mobile biological laboratories were substantiated by intelligence informationâIn an overall conclusion Kessler points out that:
âThe intelligence communityâs assessments on Iraqâs WMD stockpiles and programs turned out to be woefully wrongâThis is just an example of the colossal failure of American Intelligence Community and its flawed intelligence that led to invasion of Iraq, followed by significant destruction of not only Iraq but that whole region, because one can argue that the power vacuum that was created by toppling Saddam, directly led to the rise of extremistsâ groups in that country and we all know the chaos that these groups caused, including the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq.
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