Sunday, July 24, 2011

Norway Nazi Breivik's Hindutva Rhetoric

It appears that the Norwegian white supremacist terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto against the "Islamization of Western Europe" has been heavily influenced by the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric which is typical of the Nazi-loving Hindu Nationalists like late Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906-1973), and his present-day Sangh Parivar followers and sympathizers in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who currently rule several Indian states. This Hindutva rhetoric which infected Breivik has been spreading like a virus on the Internet, particularly on many of the well-known Islamophobic hate sites that have sprouted up in Europe and America in recent years. In fact, much of the Breivik manifesto is cut-and-pastes of anti-Muslim blog posts and columns that validated his worldview.



"It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical," Breivick wrote in his manifesto. The Christian Science Monitor has reported that "in the case of India, there is significant overlap between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims. Human rights monitors have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu for communal violence, and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here to confront the issue."




Hindu nationalists in India have a long history of admiration for Adolf Hitler, and his "Final Solution". In his book "We" (1939), Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the leader of the Hindu Nationalist RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) wrote, "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by." (We, p.35/p.43)

Here's an excerpt from an Express Tribune story on Norwegian terror suspect Breivik's anti-Muslim manifesto:

"While Breivik’s rhetoric against Muslim immigration into Europe is not unusual, he cites many names that might be familiar to Pakistanis, including Allama Muhammad Iqbal and Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, as well as prominent human rights activist Hina Jilani and Dawn columnist Irfan Hussain.

He seems to believe that Iqbal, in particular, was sympathetic to communism and views multiculturalism as a Marxist concept. He quotes Iqbal as saying “Islam equals communism plus Allah.”

Breivik also claims that Pakistan is systematically annihilating all non-Muslim communities. He claimed that Hindu girls are being forced to convert to Islam in Sindh. In this context he even quotes Hina Jilani as saying: “Have you ever heard of an Indian Muslim girl being forced to embrace Hinduism? It’s Muslims winning by intimidation.”

He goes on to describe the situation for Christians in Pakistan as being no better, citing Father Emmanuel Asi of the Theological Institute for Laity in Lahore as saying in 2007 that Pakistani Christians are frequently denied equal rights.

Jamaat-e-Islami founder Abul Ala Maududi is also quoted in the manifesto, though in a manner that would imply that the stated objective of an Islamic state is to kill or subdue all non-Muslims around the world.

Breivik seems to be a fan of Daily Times columnist Razi Azmi, whom he calls “one of the more sensible columnists of Pakistan”. He mentions one of Azmi’s pieces where the columnist asks whether it was possible to imagine a Muslim converting to Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism in a Muslim country, using it to support his view of Islam as an intolerant religion.

He also cites Dawn’s Irfan Hussain’s column criticising Hizb u-Tahrir’s vision of a caliphate.

His ire against Pakistanis and Muslims seems to have at least partial origin in personal experience. He speaks at length about his childhood best friend, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to Norway who, despite having lived several years in Europe still appeared to resent Norway and Norwegian society. “Not because he was jealous… but because it represented the exact opposite of Islamic ways,” Breivik conjectures.

The inability of Muslim immigrants to assimilate into European society seems to bother him, which he blames on Muslim parents not allowing their children to adopt European ways. He also asks why Muslim girls are considered ‘off-limits’ to everyone, including Muslim boys, and why Muslim men view ethnic Norwegian women as ‘whores’.

He also seems to believe that the Muslims in Europe who collect government benefits view it as a form of jizya, a medieval Islamic tax charged on non-Muslim minorities."


Today, the Internet is swarmed by many hateful Hindu Nationalist posters who liberally quote from Islamophobic blogs and hate sites like Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch.

Golwalkar died in 1973. But Nazi memorabilia, including Adolf Hitler's biography Mein Kampf, are continuing to grow in popularity in India, according to the BBC. The marketing chief of Crossword, a national chain of book stores in India, told the BBC that Mein Kampf has "been a consistent bestseller for us."

At Mumbai bookstores located in upscale neighborhoods, the Hitler book sales have risen sharply from 40-50 copies a year to several hundred copies annually in each store. It's not just the autobiography - books on the Nazi leader, T-shirts, bags, bandanas and key-rings are also in demand. A shop in Pune, called Teens, says it sells nearly 100 T-shirts a month with Hitler's image on them.

In the United States, Charles Johnson is among the first post-911 bloggers who have inspired other "anti-Jihadists" to join the blogosphere, including people like Pamela Geller who led the Islamophobic campaign against what she calls "Ground Zero Mosque", and Johnson helped broaden the audience for blogs like Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch. Hindu Nationalists regularly post comments on some of these sites and frequently quote from them on other websites to promote their anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan agendas.

After the tragedy in Oslo, however, Johnson is worried that his "anti-Jihadist" blogging campaign has inspired various violent xenophobic and extremist groups to promote their own agendas. He now says that these bloggers have "blood on their hands." He is quoted by Slate magazine as saying: "I don’t think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore. It’s all a bunch of kooks. I’ve watched some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts."

Here's a video clip about Hindutva inspired terrorism in India:



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Radical Hindu Government in Exile in Israel

Hindu Nationalists Admire Nazis

Can India Do a Lebanon in Pakistan?

Israeli Approval Ratings Highest in India

Europol's TE-Stat 2011 Terrorism Stats

India's Washington Lobby Collaborates with Israel Lobby

Enraged Hindu Nationalists Gang Up on Musharraf

Gandhi Opposed Creation of Israel

Hitler Memorabilia Attracts Young Indians

Hindutva Terror Can Spark Indo-Pakistan War?

India-Israel-US Axis

India's Israel Envy

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

Riaz,

Breivik was a far right saddist who has been arguing against multicultural Europe. And you somehow manage to turn this story into a hate commentary against Hinduism. Kudos !!

I guess if you read his comments on a popular blog, you would realize what a big nutcase he was:

http://translate.google.co​m/translate?&u=http%3A%2F%​2Fwww.document.no%2Fanders​-behring-breivik%2F&act=ur​l

I don't see any difference in your hatred towards Hindus in general and India in particular and Breivik's hatred of Pakistan. Like always, you have managed to pull out some random articles and concoct a hate story.

I am actually more pissed because yesterday I argued against this hate agenda in support of the rights of Islamic migrants in Europe. And yes I am a Hindu - with many Pakistani friends.

I hope you would publish this comment.

Riaz Haq said...

Anon: "Breivik was a far right saddist who has been arguing against multicultural Europe."

Yes, he is. But in his case, there is a strong Hindu Nationalist connection.

"It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical," he wrote in his manifesto.

Here's an excerpt of a Christian Science Monitor story on this subject:

In the case of India, there is significant overlap between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims. Human rights monitors have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu for communal violence, and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here to confront the issue.

RELATED Man accused in Norway attacks 'acted with intent of terror' – judge

“Like Europe’s mainstream right-wing parties, [India’s] BJP has condemned the terrorism of the right – but not the thought system which drives it. Its refusal to engage in serious introspection, or even to unequivocally condemn Hindutva violence, has been nothing short of disgraceful,” writes senior journalist Praveen Swami in today’s edition of The Hindu.

“Liberal parties, including the Congress, have been equally evasive in their critique of both Hindutva and Islamist terrorism,” he adds.


http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0725/Norway-massacre-Breivik-manifesto-attempts-to-woo-India-s-Hindu-nationalists

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an Op Ed by The Hindu on Breivik's Hindytva rhetoric:

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik hailed India's Hindu nationalist movement as a key ally in a global struggle to bring down democratic regimes across the world.

"2080: A European declaration of independence"lays out a road map for a future organisation, the Justiciar Knights, to wage a campaign that will graduate from acts of terrorism to a global war involving weapons of mass destruction — aimed at bringing down what Breivik calls the “cultural Marxist” order.

India figures in a remarkable 102 pages of the sprawling 1,518-page manifesto. Breivik's manifesto says his Justiciar Knights “support the Sanatana Dharma movements and Indian nationalists in general.” In section 3.158 of the manifesto, he explains that Hindu nationalists “are suffering from the same persecution by the Indian cultural Marxists as their European cousins.”
“Appeasing Muslims”

The United Progressive Alliance government, he goes on, “relies on appeasing Muslims and, very sadly, proselytising Christian missionaries who illegally convert low caste Hindus with lies and fear, alongside Communists who want total destruction of the Hindu faith and culture.”

Even though Hindus who are living abroad “get an eagle's view of what's happening in India, Indian Hindu residents don't see it being in the scene.”

Breivik's manifesto applauds Hindu groups who “do not tolerate the current injustice and often riot and attack Muslims when things get out of control,” but says, “this behaviour is nonetheless counterproductive.”

“Instead of attacking the Muslims, they should target the category A and B traitors in India and consolidate military cells and actively seek the overthrow of the cultural Marxist government.”

“It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible,” he concludes. “Our goals are more or less identical.”
Lists websites

Breivik lists the websites of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the National Volunteers' Organisation, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad as resources for further information.

The manifesto pledges military support “to the nationalists in the Indian civil war and in the deportation of all Muslims from India.” This is part of a larger campaign to “overthrow of all western European multiculturalist governments” and evict “U.S. military personnel on European soil.”
---
He uses the work of historians K.S. Lal and Shrinandan Vyas to point to the threat posed by Islam to Europe, saying their work has established that millions of Hindus were killed in a genocide during 1000-1525 AD. N.S. Rajaram, another historian, is quoted as saying India's “political class have been so debilitating that they continue to live in a state of constant fear.”

Breivik's manifesto envisages that this future organisation would hand out a “multi-cultural force medal,” which would be awarded for “military cooperation with nationalist Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and/or atheist forces (non-European) on Hindu, Buddhist or Jewish territory. These efforts must be directed against Jihadi or cultural Marxist forces, personnel or interests.”
---
Even though Breivik's Knights would fight shoulder to shoulder with Hindu nationalists, his vision for their rights in a post-revolutionary Europe is limited. The manifesto envisages the creation of a “servant class,” made up of non-Muslim individuals from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.

“During their stay,” the manifesto envisages, “they will work 12 hours a day for the duration of their contracts (6 or 12 months) and are then flown back to their homelands.” “These individuals,” it goes on, “will live in segregated communities in pre-defined areas of each major city.”


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2293829.ece

Anonymous said...

Dear Riaz,

It seems that you protest too much. Hitler is as popular in India as well as Pakistan. From a neutral (liberal) source:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,683966,00.html

Key takeaway point: Pakistanis always hone in on that topic whenever they talk to Germans. "We're Aryans too," they say, because there was an Indo-Germanic race, the Aryans. Besides, Hitler was a military genius, they add.

Hitler had both actual Hindu and Muslim collaborators.

Your silence on the muslim side of the equation speaks volumes

sid rock said...

Hitler is as popular in Pakistan as in India. Historically, Hitler had both Muslim and Hindu collaborators. Finally the true inheritors of Hitler are the Pakistani auxilaries who killed innocent people in Chabad house attack in 2008 attack in Mumbai. Jews in India have been present for ever without any discrimination.

Your deliberate avoidance of Hitler's popularity in Pakistan speaks volumes.

Riaz Haq said...

sid rock: "Hitler is as popular in Pakistan as in India."

There may be individuals in Pakistan who like Hitler, but you'd be hard pressed to name any Pakistani leader who has lavished effusive praise on the Nazi leader.

It's very different from the situation in India where RSS leader Golwalkar has inspired a whole generation of BJP Hindu Nationalists to enact Hitler's "Final Solution" against Indian Muslims.

sid rock said...

Dear Riaz, this is from a neutral source which also talks a lot about popularity of Hitler in India (http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/04/21/the-return-of-hitler/)

"Ilhas Niaz, history professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University, says Hitler fares well in Pakistan in part because of a particularly Pakistani admiration for strong leaders. “The cult of personality is strong,” says Niaz. When “the current crisis cannot be met by any ordinary leader, people are looking into history for a charismatic figure.” Aurangzeb Nazir, a 24-year-old student in Islamabad, told Maclean’s, “Hitler united his nation and brought it from the brink of collapse to global prominence. That’s why we look up to him.” It’s certainly not a new phenomenon. One of Pakistan’s most beloved leaders, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, also saw the 20th century’s most famous mass murderer as someone to emulate. “Bhutto had silver-bound copies of Mein Kampf in his library,” says Niaz. “He incorporated lines from Hitler’s speeches directly into his own oratory."

ZA Bhutto one of the modern gods of Pakistan and a Hitler admirer.

Also see this: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,683966,00.html

"I was glad I avoided the usual Hitler conversation. Pakistanis always hone in on that topic whenever they talk to Germans. "We're Aryans too," they say, because there was an Indo-Germanic race, the Aryas. Besides, Hitler was a military genius, they add. "

It seems belief in racial purity nonsense is not an exclusive territory for Indians.

regards

Riaz Haq said...

sid rock: "ZA Bhutto one of the modern gods of Pakistan and a Hitler admirer."

You are basing it on the opinion of some one other than ZAB. The fact is that there is no record of ZAB ever praising Hitler.

And, unlike in India where Nazi memorabilia is growing in popularity, there is no evidence of it in Pakistan.

sid rock said...

Well the article credits not just opinion of a "somebody" but statements of fact from a highly credentialed Pakistani academic as source "Ilhas Niaz, history professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University".

He makes very specific factual statements: (i) Bhutto kept a copy of Mein Kampf in his personal library,

(ii) Bhutto included elements of Mein Kampf in his speeches.

In a law court Prof. Niaz's statements would hold water as an expert opinion not as hearsay. And if they are wrong it will be very easy to disprove them.

Riaz Haq said...

sid rock: "He makes very specific factual statements: (i) Bhutto kept a copy of Mein Kampf in his personal library,(ii) Bhutto included elements of Mein Kampf in his speeches."

It's still one man's opinion based on what someone reads. Being a well-read man, I'm sure Bhutto had many other books besides Mein Kampf. Some people say he also owned a copy of The Prince by Machiavelli as well as a copy of The Quran. Others allege he was a fan of Napoleon.

All of it proves nothing except that Bhutto read a lot.

Anonymous said...

interesting turns out the artwork for the crusader cross of Breivik's organization was done by an indian company based in Varanasi headed by a muslim!

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2293819.ece?homepage=true

We truly do live in interesting times!

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from Wall Street Journal blog "Norway Gunman Fascinated By Hindu Nationalism":

According to copies of the manifesto online, Mr. Breivik believed there were conspiracies to suppress evidence of a “Hindu genocide” in the mountainous Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. To support that contention, he included tracts verbatim from a Hindu conspiracy theory website in his manifesto, one of many Indian websites that he cited and quoted from.

Elsewhere he used material from the crowd-sourced Wikipedia entries for “Hindutva” (Hindu nationalism) and “Saffronization” to describe “the state of the Indian/Hindu resistance.”

At one point he criticizes Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for being too sympathetic to Muslims. Elsewhere, he says more broadly, “The India elites, just like European elites, are aiding and abetting the Muslim conquest by way of appeasement.”

Mr. Breikvik devotes many pages to the development of uniforms, insignia and medals, and suggests India and China as possible destinations to which to outsource the manufacture of these items, as well as the manufacture of tombstones for those who fall in the war against multiculturalism.

The Hindu reported in an earlier piece that he had already sourced some insignia samples from India, ironically, from a Muslim weaver living in the city of Varanasi.

The gunman on the one hand suggests that Europe and the subcontinent should ally diplomatically and militarily over some sort of shared oppression by Islam, while on the other he suggests that “non-Muslim” Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis would be good candidates for a serf class who would live in separate ghettos and work 12 hours a day to clean, garden, carry out construction and drive taxis for their European masters.

“This is not slavery as slavery is taking away peoples freedom,” he claimed.

A Christian Science Monitor report said that a former Hindu nationalist lawmaker, while condemning the shooting, didn’t condemn Mr. Breikvik’s ideas.

The Monitor quoted B.P. Singhal, a retired MP from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party as saying, “I was with the shooter in his objective, but not in his method.”


http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/07/26/norway-gunman-fascinated-by-hindu-nationalism/

Anonymous said...

Mr Haq, you seem to be resonable man most of the times but not in this case. Muslims in India are much more safer and prosperous than minoroties in Pakistan. India has had president,chief justice, cricket captain, governors, industrialists from muslim communities population of muslims has grown faster then population of hindu majority. Muslims are allowed to practice and preach their religion in India unlike Pakistan where blasphemy laws are meant to harm minorities without any reason. Hindu overall are much more tolerant than muslims. Hindus are nor considered apostates when they convert to Islam in India. The law of the land protects them unlike Pakistan.

Shafiq said...

Sid Rock: “In a law court Prof. Niaz's statements would hold water as an expert opinion not as hearsay. And if they are wrong it will be very easy to disprove them.”

I practice law in England and I can assure that in a law court Prof. Niaz's statements would NOT hold water as an expert opinion. What you quote are professor’s statements and that is all – since 9/11 a number of politicians have admitted to studying the Quran, have quoted from it and have copies of Quran in their personal library. So what does it may them. Muslims?

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from an interesting article titled "FBI ‘Islam 101′ Guide Depicted Muslims as 7th-Century Simpletons by Spencer Ackerman published in Wired Magazine:

As recently as January 2009, the FBI thought its agents ought to know the following crucial information about Muslims:

* They engage in a “circumcision ritual”
* More than 9,000 of them are in the U.S. military
* Their religion “transforms [a] country’s culture into 7th-century Arabian ways.”

And this was what the FBI considered “recommended reading” about Islam:

* A much-criticized tome, The Arab Mind, that one reviewer called “a collection of outrageously broad — and often suspect — generalizations“
* A book by one of Norwegian terrorist suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s favorite anti-Muslim authors.

All this is revealed in a PowerPoint presentation by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit (.pdf), which trains new Bureau recruits. Among the 62 slides in the presentation, designed to teach techniques for “successful interviews/interrogations with individuals from the M.E. [Middle East],” is an instruction that the “Arabic mind” is “swayed more by words than ideas and more by ideas than facts.”

The briefing presents much information that has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with constitutionally-protected religious practice and social behavior, such as estimating the number of mosques in America and listing the states with the largest Muslim populations.

Other slides paint Islam in a less malicious light, and one urges “respectful liaison” as a “proactive approach” to engaging Muslims. But even those exhibit what one American Muslim civil rights leader calls “the understanding of a third grader, and even then, a badly misinformed third grader.”

One slide asks, “Is Iran an Arab country?” (It’s not.) Another is just a picture of worry beads.

“Based on this presentation, it is easy to see why so many in law enforcement and the FBI view American Muslims with ignorance and suspicion,” says Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal aid group. “The presentation appears to treat all Muslims with one broad brush and makes no distinction between lawful religious practice and beliefs and unlawful activities.”...


http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/fbi-islam-101-guide/

Riaz Haq said...

It's interesting to see how the Christian right-wingers in America, like the Hindu Nationalists in India, are trying to distance themselves from Breivik. It's the same people who routinely blame the entire Muslim faith for the actions of a few who claim to be Muslim.

Here's an excerpt from a Washington Post report:

On Wednesday’s “Daily Show,” Stewart took issue with Fox News claiming that the “liberal media” unfairly labeled the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, as a Christian, therefore victimizing other Christians in the process.

On Fox Business Network’s “America’s Nightly Scoreboard,” contributor Lt. Col. Ralph Peters said that Breivik is not a Christian because “anybody can claim anything,” and also that the suspect is “a godsend to the liberal media.”

“There have been tens of thousands of Islamist terrorist attacks, and the media have rushed to say it's nothing to do with Islam,” he said. “Now one crazy claims he's a Christian and commits an act of terror, and ... we expect more Christian terrorists.”

Bill O’Reilly said it was “impossible” that Breivik is Christian just because he claimed he was one. But Stewart pointed out that O’Reilly felt comfortable calling the suspect in the Fort Hood shooting, Nidal Malik Hasan, a “Muslim terrorist” because he had a business card that read “Soldier of Allah.”

“See. That guy printed up a ‘Soldier of Allah’ business card. The other guy only printed up an ‘Army of Christ’ manifesto,” Stewart said. “I guess the only connection is both psychos, for some reason, spent the day at Kinko’s.”

Jordan Sekulow, The Post’s Religion Right Now blogger, agreed that Breivik is not a “Christian” just because he used the term.

“Breivik is not a ‘Christian terrorist’ because, according to his own description of what the word ‘Christian’ means to him, and his actions, he is not a Christian,” Sekulow wrote.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, a contributor to The Post’s On Faith, thinks O’Reilly’s claim is “nonsense.”

“Breivik says he is a Christian; he wrote a ‘manifesto’ in which he attempts to link Christianity to opposition to Muslim immigration,” Lynn wrote. “Yet he failed miserably to understand the faith he claimed to champion.”


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/jon-stewart-fox-news-calls-christians-victims-of-norway-attacks/2011/07/28/gIQA2rhCfI_blog.html

Data Cruncher said...

" It's the same people who routinely blame the entire Muslim faith for the actions of a few who claim to be Muslim.
"
SO what should the media do when next Shehzhad Faisal or Nidal Hassan comes. Claim that they are not muslims. Does it matter whether they are called muslims. Their name is a giveaway right?

Riaz Haq said...

DC: Does it matter whether they are called muslims. Their name is a giveaway right?

Read my latest post to get your answer.

We need to be consistent in labeling terrorists.

If Nidal Malik Hasan and Faisal Shahzad are "Muslim terrorists", then Anders Breivik is a "Christian terrorist".

http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/07/nidal-is-muslim-but-breivik-is-not.html

Data Cruncher said...

If Nidal Malik Hasan and Faisal Shahzad are "Muslim terrorists", then Anders Breivik is a "Christian terrorist".
===

how about some consistency in frequency too. How many "muslim terrorists" incidents happen compared to "christian terrorist".

It is the frequency of such terrorism which made the west stereotype muslims.

Your pathetic attempt of moral equivalency is sad. There has to a monthly Norway incident before the world start noticing 'christian terrorism'

Riaz Haq said...

DC: "It is the frequency of such terrorism which made the west stereotype muslims."

How about the death toll? Is that not more important than the frequency?

Former U.S. intelligence chief Dennis Blair said Friday the U.S. should stop its drone campaign in Pakistan, and reconsider the $80 billion a year it spends to fight terrorism.

Here's an excerpt from an AP report on Blair opposing drone attacks in Pakistan:

He pointed out that 17 Americans have been killed inside the US by terrorists in the decade since Sept. 11, including the 14 killed in the Ft. Hood massacre, while car accidents and daily crime combined have killed some 1.5 million people during the same 10 years.

http://hosted2.ap.org/COGRA/e109e277e48c4e219e07a1d4710177b3/Article_2011-07-29-Terrorism-Blair/id-556a7eb8f7be40749ca87b9f0491a89a

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from a Guardian story on Breivik's Hindutva connection:

In his rambling 1,500-page manifesto, Breivik voiced approval of Hindu nationalist parties and called for the deportation of all Muslims from India. He also berated the Congress-led government for "appeasing Muslims and, very sadly, proselytising Christian missionaries who illegally convert low cast Hindus with lies and fear".

Hindu nationalist leaders have denied links with Breivik and some have sought to distance themselves from his actions. Others, however, have expressed sympathy with Breivik's ideas.

"It is time we sit up and discuss issues like multiculturalism, immigration, [and the] problem of Islam's assimilation with liberal democracies without any malice," prominent nationalist Hindu leader Ram Madhav wrote in his blog.

Former Indian MP BP Singhal, of the Bhartiya Janata party, was more forthright. "I was with the shooter in his objective but not in his method," he told the US-based Christian Science Monitor. Singhal said India and Norway should deny voting rights to "foreign religionists" in order to resolve "the bane of democracy".


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/norway-massacre-india-reaction

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from a Counterpoint article titled "The New Anti-Semitism" by Uri Avnery:

The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, calls his boss, Adolf Hitler, by hell-phone.

“Mein Führer,” he exclaims excitedly. “News from the world. It seems we were on the right track, after all. Anti-Semitism is conquering Europe!”

“Good!” the Führer says, “That will be the end of the Jews!”

“Hmmm…well…not exactly, mein Führer. It looks as though we chose the wrong Semites. Our heirs, the new Nazis, are going to annihilate the Arabs and all the other Muslims in Europe.” Then, with a chuckle, “After all, there are many more Muslims than Jews to exterminate.”

“But what about the Jews?” Hitler insists.

“You won’t believe this: the new Nazis love Israel, the Jewish State - and Israel loves them!”

THE atrocity committed this week by the Norwegian neo-Nazi – is it an isolated incident? Right-wing extremists all over Europe and the US are already declaiming in unison: “He does not belong to us! He is just a lone individual with a deranged mind! There are crazy people everywhere! You cannot condemn a whole political camp for the deeds of one single person!”

Sounds familiar. Where did we hear this before?

Of course, after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

There is no connection between the Oslo mass-murder and the assassination in Tel Aviv. Or is there?

During the months leading up to Rabin’s murder, a growing hate campaign was orchestrated against him. Almost all the Israeli right-wing groups were competing among themselves to see who could demonize him most effectively.

In one demonstration, a photo-montage of Rabin in the uniform of an [] SS officer was paraded around. On the balcony overlooking this demonstration, Binyamin Netanyahu could be seen applauding wildly, while a coffin marked “Rabin” was paraded below. Religious groups staged a medieval, kabbalistic ceremony, in which Rabin was condemned to death. Senior rabbis took part in the campaign. No right-wing or religious voices were raised in warning.

The actual murder was indeed carried out by a single individual, Yigal Amir, a former settler, the student of a religious university. It is generally assumed that before the deed he consulted with at least one senior rabbi. Like Anders Behring Breivik, the Oslo murderer, he planned his deed carefully, over a long time, and executed it cold-bloodedly. He had no accomplices.


http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery07292011.html

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a general response to a number of posters whose comments reflect extreme anti-Muslim bigotry based on utter ignorance.

To get enlightened, I suggest that they look at Europl terrorism data for 2010.

The Europol TE-Stat 2011 report appendix 2 shows that only 3 out of 249 terror incidents in 2010 involved Muslim attackers.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/te-sat2011.pdf

Riaz Haq said...

Weeks before the Norway tragedy inflicted by right-wing terrorist Breivik, the US Homeland Security Dept disbanded its efforts to track domestic right wing terror under pressure from the conservatives, according to Washington Post:

The Department of Homeland Security has stepped back for the past two years from conducting its own intelligence and analysis of home-grown extremism, according to current and former department officials, even though law enforcement and civil rights experts have warned of rising extremist threats.

The department has cut the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam, canceled numerous state and local law enforcement briefings, and held up dissemination of nearly a dozen reports on extremist groups, the officials and others said.

The decision to reduce the department’s role was provoked by conservative criticism of an intelligence report on “Rightwing Extremism” issued four months into the Obama administration, the officials said. The report warned that the poor economy and Obama’s election could stir “violent radicalization,” but it was pilloried as an attack on conservative ideologies, including opponents of abortion and immigration.
-----------
“Strategic bulletins have been minimal, since that incident,” said Mike Sena, an intelligence official in California who presides over the National Fusion Center Association, a group of 72 federally chartered institutions in which state, local and federal officials share sensitive information. “Having analytical staff, to educate line officers on the extremists, is critical.…This is definitely one area” where more effort is warranted by DHS.

Similar frustration was expressed in interviews with current and former officials at fusion centers in Missouri, Virginia and Tennessee. Daryl Johnson, formerly the senior domestic terrorism analyst at DHS and a principal author of the disputed report, confirmed in an interview that he left in frustration last year after his office was “gutted” in response to complaints.

“Other reports written by DHS about Muslim extremists … got through without any major problems,” Johnson said. “Ours went through endless reviews and edits, and nothing came out.”

The threat of Islamic-related terrorism in the United States has by all accounts captured the most attention and resources at DHS since it was formed in 2002. But a study conducted for the department last October concluded that a majority of the 86 major foiled and executed terrorist plots in the United States from 1999 to 2009 were unrelated to al-Qaeda and allied movements.

“Do not overlook other types of terrorist groups,” the report warned, noting that five purely domestic groups had considered using weapons of mass destruction in that period. Similar warnings have been issued by the two principal non-government groups that track domestic terrorism: the New York-based Anti-Defamation League and the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/homeland-security-department-curtails-home-grown-terror-analysis/2011/06/02/AGQEaDLH_story.html

Riaz Haq said...

Excerpts of NY Times Op Ed on France's Sarkozy exploiting xenophobia:

Mr. Sarkozy may think it is smart politics to pander to racism and xenophobia. He has done it before. And, sadly, his harsh new tone has given him a quick boost in the polls. But it is damaging to French society. And it may prove a mixed political blessing in May. Many French voters already think that he lacks presidential dignity.

Times are tough in France, but Mr. Sarkozy could have run a more elevated campaign. He has domestic achievements (pension reform) and international achievements (Libya). His main opponent, Mr. Hollande, has vague ideas and unrealistic economic proposals.

Instead, Mr. Sarkozy has chosen the low road. At a packed rally on Sunday, he attacked European Union trade rules, which he said had opened French markets to “savage” competition, and called for a protectionist “buy European” rule for public spending that would raise costs and invite retaliation. He also threatened to suspend French participation in Europe’s 25-nation open border agreement unless others did more to keep illegal immigrants and refugees out of Europe. A few days earlier, he had attacked legal immigration, promising a 50 percent cut in admissions for family reunification.

In a particularly vile gambit from a man who already brags about banning the burqa in public and Muslim-style street prayer, Mr. Sarkozy now pledges to protect French consumers from unknowingly eating halal meat, slaughtered in accordance with Muslim dietary codes. He called for legislation requiring all meat labels to note the slaughtering methods used. This proposal originally came from Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate of the unabashedly xenophobic National Front. Mr. Sarkozy first rightly called it frivolous. Then he adopted it.

Five million to six million Muslims now live in France, almost a tenth of the total population. It is cruel to keep family members from joining them and cruel and destructive to subject their religion to mockery. Ms. Le Pen is currently running third in the polls. Regrettably, Mr. Sarkozy has no problem being frivolous or cruel if it means he can peel away some of her voters.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/opinion/mr-sarkozy-on-the-low-road.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=sarkozy&st=cse

Anonymous said...

Dr. Haq,

Here is evidence of the deep hatred that the hindutva fanatics have for our country:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j95811jmey4

This video is about the grandson of our Great Leader (Quaid-e-Azam) through his only daughter Dina Jinnah. She chose to remain in India (when our Great Leader came to Karachi to build Pakistan) and her son (Nusli) grew up there.

According to multiple credible sources on the internet, a number of bloggers are reporting that our Great Leader's grandson faced horrific discrimination and oppression in India after the creation of Pakistan.

Apparently, the racist-casteist hindutva brahmins forced him to live of deprivation and poverty that was worse than the untouchables. When he could no longer bear the misery and asked for a way out of his poverty, they made him an offer of huge sums of money if he would act as their agent and malign his grandfather (our Great Leader).

As you can see in that propaganda video, the hindutva fanatics are forcing him to lie that our Great Leader ate pork-bacon every morning, drank scotch-whisky every evening, and chain-smoked all day long-- exactly like a typical Englishman.

They are clearly trying to spread lies about our Great Leader that he was not even remotely a good muslim, and that he was a throughly-westernized Anglophile who had contempt for the tenets of Islamic Law. They are always pointing to his lavish life-style amidst the backdrop of a very poor country, where he had a thousand Saville-Row suits, never wore the same imported tie twice, and lived in a palatial house full of servants on Malabar Hill in Bombay. They also conjure up doctored Photos that show the Mother of our Nation (Madar-e-Millat)wearing a hindu saree. We know this is impossible, because muslim women never wore sarees and sarees cannot even be seen anywhere in Pakistan. But the media spreads these faked photos just to show that the Mother of our Nation, Fatima Jinnah, was not a good muslim. I have also seen insidious hindutva-brahman websites that question how the sister of the Father of the Nation can be the Mother of the Nation, and then deviously ask what was the real relationship between the two?

As you can see, the brahmans go to venomous lengths to spread these falsehoods about the foundation of our great country. But they never speak about the uncomfortable truths about the founder of their own country. For example, they never point out that Gandhi learnt to love roast-beef when we was living in London. They always cover up his lavish lifestyle where he lived in the palace called Sabarmati-Ashram Mahal and ate beef-steaks with a fork and knife every evening.

This propaganda coming out of our Eastern Neighbour is now overwhelming. Our whole community here has started to question the very basis for the existence of Pakistan. We are being fed these lies by the Hindutva-Zionist-controlled Media every day. We need to fight this now. Otherwise it will be too late.

Can you do a blog article correcting these misperceptions about our Great Leader. Something that sets the record straight that he never ate pork, never drank whisky, prayed five times a day and cared more about what was good for the poor Indian muslims rather than about what the English Upper-Classes and Waderas thought of him.

It would also be good if you could set the record straight on the bisexual nature of Gandhi, his deviant behaviour with his niece, his hate-filled & communally-divisive world-view, his expensive Saville-row suits and ties, his palatial lifestyle surrounded by servants, and his anglophile roast-beef eating habits.

Thank you.

Riaz Haq said...

90% of Indians are idiots, says Justice Katju according to India Times:

NEW DELHI: Ninety percent of Indians are “idiots” who can easily be misled by mischievous elements in the name of religion, Press Council of India (PCI) chairperson Justice Markandey Katju claimed today.

“I say ninety percent of Indians are idiots. You people don’t have brains in your heads….It is so easy to take you for a ride,” he said at a seminar here.

He said that a communal riot could be incited in Delhi for as meagre an amount as Rs 2000. He said that all somebody has to do is make a mischievous gesture of disrespect to a place of worship and people start fighting each other.

“You mad people will start fighting amongst yourself not realising that some agent provocateur is behind this,”he said.

Katju said that before 1857 there was no communalism in the country but the situation was different now. “Today 80 percent Hindus are communal and 80 percent Muslims are communal. This is the harsh truth, bitter truth that I am telling you. How is it that in 150 years you have gone backwards instead of moving forward because the English kept injecting poison,” Katju said.

“The policy that emanated from London after the mutiny in 1857 that there is only one way to control this country that is to make Hindus and Muslims fight each other,” he said.

He said that then there was a propaganda that Hindi was the language of Hindus and Urdu of Muslims. “Our ancestors also studied Urdu, but it is so easy to fool you. You are idiots so how difficult is it to make an idiot of you,” Katju said.

Katju said that he was saying these harsh things to make Indians, whom he loved to understand the whole game and not remain fools.


http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-08/news/35689114_1_justice-markandey-katju-hindus-communal-riot

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a TOI story on Indian home minister talking about "Hindu Terrorism" in India:

Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Sunday kicked up a storm by accusing RSS and BJP training camps promoting Hindu ``terrorism'' in the country with the main Opposition party angrily hitting back, describing the remark as an attempt to divide the nation and seeking an apology from Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

"They are talking about infiltration but we have this report that whether it is BJP or RSS, their training camps are promoting Hindu terrorism," Shinde said at the Congress meeting in Jaipur.

"We are keeping a strict eye on it. The Samjhauta Express blast, Mecca Masjid (blast), Malegaon blast — they are planting bombs and blaming minorities for it. We need to be careful for safety of our country," the minister added.

This is probably for the first time that a senior member of the government has publicly sought to link terrorism to a religious basis, with the government being chary of using terms like Islamic terrorism. Shinde directly linked BJP and RSS with groups like Abhinav Bharat, which is charged with the Malegaon and Samjhauta blasts.

There were angry exchanges between then home minister P Chidambaram and BJP MPs in the Rajya Sabha after the Congress leader said the government was going to pursue a zero tolerance policy against both jihadi terrorism and Hindu militancy. BJP sought to know why he refrained from using the term "Islamic terrorism" even though he used the words Hindu terrorism during his reply to the debate on the internal security. ...


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Shindes-linkage-of-RSS-BJP-camps-to-promoting-Hindu-terror-kicks-up-a-row/articleshow/18109339.cms

Riaz Haq said...

Ayan Hirsi Ali, who was dis-invited by Brandeis University where she was to receive an honorary degree, tells Muslims to convert to Christianity by quoting verses in The Quran that she sees as encouraging violence and misogyny but she fails to see similar verses in The Bible....
Here are some verses from a Holy Book:
1. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
2. “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ ... do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death.”
3. “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”
Q. Are these from the Quran or the Bible?
A. From the Bible. Matthew 10:34, Deuteronomy 13:6-9, Numbers 31:17-18

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents 150 victims of American drones and was twice denied entry to the U.S. to speak about them, told my Intercept colleague Ryan Devereaux how two of his child clients would likely react to Obama’s “apology” yesterday:

“Today, if Nabila or Zubair or many of the civilian victims, if they are watching on TV the president being so remorseful over the killing of a Westerner, what message is that taking?” The answer, he argued, is “that you do not matter, you are children of a lesser God, and I’m only going to mourn if a Westerner is killed.”

The British-Yemeni journalist Abubakr Al-Shamahi put it succinctly: “It makes me angry that non-Western civilian victims of drone strikes are not given the same recognition by the US administration.” The independent journalist Naheed Mustafa said she was “hugely irritated by the ‘drone strikes have killed good Westerners so now we know there are issues with drones’ stories.” The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson this morning observed: “It is all too easy to ignore … the dubious morality of the whole enterprise — until the unfortunate victims happen to be Westerners. Only then does ‘collateral damage’ become big news and an occasion for public sorrow.”

This highlights the ugliest propaganda tactic on which the War on Terror centrally depends, one in which the U.S. media is fully complicit: American and Western victims of violence by Muslims are endlessly mourned, while Muslim victims of American and Western violence are completely disappeared.

When there is an attack by a Muslim on Westerners in Paris, Sydney, Ottawa, Fort Hood or Boston, we are deluged with grief-inducing accounts of the victims. We learn their names and their extinguished life aspirations, see their pictures, hear from their grieving relatives, watch ceremonies honoring their lives and mourning their deaths, launch campaigns to memorialize them. Our side’s victims aren’t just humanized by our media, but are publicly grieved as martyrs.

I happened to be in Canada the week of the shooting at the Parliament in Ottawa, as well as a random attack on two Canadian soldiers days earlier in a parking lot in Southern Quebec, and there was non-stop media coverage of the victims, their families, their lives:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/24/central-war-terror-propaganda-tool-western-victims-acknowledged/

Riaz Haq said...

The Power of Social Media: Emboldened Right-Wing Trolls Who are Attempting an Internet purge -

Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in a “town hall” meeting at the headquarters of Facebook in Menlo Park, California. At the event, Modi answered pre-screened queries from the audience and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook. During this conversation, the prime minister heralded the power of social media as a vehicle for democracy and good governence, before adding that it “allows for accountability instantly.” Modi declared, “I ask all world leaders not to avoid social media and to connect to it.” However, in his eulogy to the power of the internet, the prime minister appeared to have forgotten about an aspect of social media that doesn’t lend itself to either a functional democracy or accountability. It is a spectre that has been haunting journalists in India: that of internet trolls.

The internet is no stranger to trolls—users who post inflammatory, threatening or disruptive messages—with Twitter itself having admitted to not having proper policies in place to protect its users from harassment. The Indian Twitter troll, however, is an oddly specific creature. This troll belongs to a motley digital mob comprised of Hindutva converts, misogynists, minorities, Congress baiters and “sickular”—a pejorative portmanteau coined for those percieved as having a secular point of view—haters, all united by their atavistic chest-thumping bhakti—devotion—for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.


The use of social networking platforms by the BJP demonstrates their agility in using technology for the cause of “Hindu Rashtra.” Behind the apparently toxic rants of the Hindutva troll, there is a method and design. It is interesting to note that Modi hosted the 150 social networkers at his official residence on the occasion of the launch of the Digital India Campaign in Delhi. The prime minister could have easily taken up a digitally-enabled education or health project to kick-start his campaign; instead, he chose to meet people who have become a byword in online terror, hate and misogyny—a symbolism ignored by most, the press and the victims included. With Modi pushing for deepening of digitisation, the size and virtual power of his abusive online army will only increase in the days ahead in its political-ideological battle for a “Congress-mukt” Bharat, cold comfort for the likes of Ravish Kumar, Sagarika Ghose and the rest. -

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/power-social-media-emboldened-right-wing-trolls

Riaz Haq said...

From #Modi's Guru Golwalkar to #GOP's #Trump: #India's #Hindu Nationalists Cheer & Pray for #Trump. #Islamophobia
http://www.dawn.com/news/1274763/from-golwalkar-to-trump

INDIA’S Hindu right is desperately seeking a role in the American elections even if it’s a walk-on appearance in a crowd scene. It asks if its right-wing friends from Israel can tip the balance in a keen American contest, why can’t the Hindu right be at least a cheerleader. After being rapped on the knuckles by Barack Obama a few times — following the cordial talks with Prime Minister Modi in Delhi, for example — the Hindu right wants a less censorious incumbent in the White House. Public prayers and weird voodoo rituals have been invoked to boost the chances of Donald Trump.

The two have much in common. Mr Trump claims to speak for core American values, passing off contrived fear for nationalist fervour. In India, the Hindu right has laid claim to defining — rather, it has been allowed by a somnolent opposition to prescribe — what is nationalist and what isn’t. Someone’s stand on the Kashmiri uprising is the signal for praise or rebuke. They both hate Muslims. And, as Mr Trump’s aversion of Latinos expands his arena of nurtured prejudices the Hindu right targets the tribal communities of the northeast.

Hindtuva goons, raised on political patronage, periodically bludgeon Manipuri and other people from the northeast in Delhi and elsewhere. Mr Trump’s veiled fear of African Americans mutates in India into physical assaults on students and visitors of dark complexion. As with Muslims and Dalits, African residents find it difficult to rent a house in Delhi.

Mr Trump and the Hindu right have a common ancestor too: Adolf Hitler. As such, they are joined at the hip in their biases. About Muslims, Trump says: “They’re not coming to this country if I’m president. And if Obama has brought some to this country they are leaving, they’re going, they’re gone.”

Trump and the Hindu right have a common ancestor: Adolf Hitler. As such, they are joined at the hip in their biases.
As his wife plagiarised from Michelle Obama’s speech, Trump borrowed without attribution from Guru Golwakar’s book We or Our Nationhood Defined. The early pioneer of the Hindu right wrote: “The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture ... In a word, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizens’ rights.”

There was a notable difference though. Golwalkar’s reference to non-Hindu people included Indian Christians. This should not deter any alliance of two utterly right-wing demagogues. After all, Golwakar’s praise of Germany’s treatment of Jews didn’t deter his followers from bonding with right-wing leaders in Israel.

“To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews,” Golwalkar wrote with approval. “Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by. Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”

Riaz Haq said...

#Houston's #Indian-#American shooter wore #Nazi emblems, drove a Porsche, carried 2,600 rounds of ammo, police say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/27/houston-shooter-wore-nazi-emblems-drove-a-porsche-carried-2600-rounds-of-ammo-police-say/

A man who injured nine people in a shooting rampage in Houston on Monday was wearing military clothes and Nazi emblems during the attack, and was carrying nearly 2,600 rounds of ammunition inside a Porsche convertible parked at the scene, authorities said.

The gunman, identified by local media as Nathan DeSai, 46, was shot and killed by police after he opened fire on morning commuters near a strip mall in a mostly residential neighborhood west of downtown. Police did not publicly name DeSai as the shooter, but the Houston Chronicle and KTRK reported that they had confirmed his identity with officials.

The shooter was carrying a .45-caliber handgun and wearing “military-style apparel” during the shooting, with vintage Nazi emblems on his clothes and “on his personal effects,” police said in a news briefing Monday afternoon. A search of his apartment, which is several blocks from the scene, turned up similar military memorabilia going back to the Civil War, police said.


A bomb squad that searched his black Porsche convertible uncovered a Thompson submachine gun — commonly known as a Tommy gun — and nearly 2,600 rounds of live ammunition, according to police, who said he purchased both of his firearms legally. Police also found a sheathed knife, a notebook with a Nazi symbol and 75 spent shell casings on the scene.

Riaz Haq said...

Is Notorious Islamophobic Think Tank Inspiring More Far-Right Terrorism?
More worrying is the prestige that the Gatestone Institute seems to be able to flaunt along with its considerable resources.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/notorious-islamophobic-think-tank-inspiring-more-far-right-terrorism

Blumenthal notes that Gatestone emerged in 2011 as an offshoot of the right wing Hudson Institute. Since then it has become a hub for anti-Muslim ideologues of all hues; neoconservative, ultra-Zionist and so-called ‘counterjihad’. It has acted as a clearing-house, for example, for claims about Muslim ‘no-go zones’ (the likes of which ‘terrorism expert’ Steven Emerson was widely ridiculed for, including by UK Prime Minister David Cameron). Its articles carry fear-mongering titles such as: ‘‘Spain: Soon the Muslims will be kings of the world’, ‘Britain’s Islamic future’, ’The Islamization of France’, ‘The Islamization of Germany’ and ‘The Islamization of Belgium and the Netherlands’.

The theme of so-called ‘Islamisation’ is fundamental to the paranoid political imaginary of the counterjihad movement, combining anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment. It is the notion that animates a network of groups under the banner ‘Stop the Islamisation of Nations’ (SION), and underpins street movements like Germany’s PEGIDA (an acronym of the German for ‘Patriot Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West’) and the English Defence League (EDL) – and their respective copycat movements.

It is a favourite topic of many right-wing populist politicians like the infamous Geert Wilders, anti-Islam leader of the Dutch ‘Party for Freedom’, who, according to Blumenthal, calls Gatestone founder Nina Rosenwald a ‘good friend’ (perhaps why Gatestone recently published an article defending his call for ‘fewer Moroccans’ in the Netherlands, comments for which he is facing hate speech charges). ‘Islamisation’ was also, of course, the major preoccupation of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. In July 2011 he killed 77 people in an attack he called ‘gruesome but necessary’ and saw as a precursor to the civil war he believed was inevitable - that he hoped would drive Islam and Muslims out of Europe.

Eurabia conspiracy theorists and the Abstraction Fund

Breivik detailed his views – typical of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant counterjihad movement - on the ‘threat’ posed to Europe by Islam in a 1,518 page ‘manifesto’. Given that virtually every article that Gatestone publishes is suffused with the same assumptions (for instance ‘How Islam Conquers Europe’, ‘UK Islamic takeover plot’) it is no surprise to learn that the institute’s authors include many of the writers cited by Breivik in his notorious tract. Gatestone author Robert Spencer and his Jihad Watch website were mentioned 116 times, while Daniel Pipes and his Middle East Forum (MEF) got 18 citations. Other Gatestone authors mentioned in Breivik's lengthy screed include David Horowitz and the aforementioned Steven Emerson.

More importantly, Nina Rosenwald’s mega-foundation, the Abstraction Fund, provides funding to many of these organisations: the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism, Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP), Pipes MEF, and many other Islamophobia industry groups besides. (Abstraction also gives to a host of pro-Israel organisations like CAMERA, MEMRI and the Zionist Organization of America, illustrating the increasingly common funding overlap between many anti-Muslim and some pro-Israel groups, observed in the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network’s recent report ‘The Business of Backlash’.) Interestingly, as well as presiding over the Gatestone Institute, Rosenwald is also financing it with money from the Abstraction Fund, albeit indirectly: as with other groups, the money is being channelled via a third party (MEF).

Riaz Haq said...

Savitri Devi: The mystical fascist being resurrected by the alt-right

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41757047

Savitri Devi, a mystical admirer of Hitler and a cat-loving devotee of the Aryan myth, seemed destined to fade into obscurity after her death 25 years ago. But thanks to the rise of the extreme right, her name and her image now crop up online more and more, writes Maria Margaronis.
In 2012, browsing the website of Greece's Golden Dawn party for an article I was writing, I stumbled on a picture of a woman in a blue silk sari gazing at a bust of Hitler against a blazing sunset sky.
What was this apparently Hindu woman doing on the site of an openly racist party devoted to expelling all foreigners from Greece? I filed her as a curiosity at the back of my mind, until the rising tide of extreme-right politics in Europe and America threw up the name "Savitri Devi" once again.
It isn't hard these days to find discussions of Savitri Devi's books on neo-Nazi web forums, especially The Lightning and the Sun, which expounds the theory that Hitler was an avatar - an incarnation - of the Hindu god Vishnu, and Gold in the Furnace, which urges true believers to trust that National Socialism will rise again. The American extreme-right website Counter-Currents hosts an extensive online archive of her life and work.
Her views are reaching a wider public, too, thanks to American alt-right leaders such as Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon, former Trump chief strategist and chair of Breitbart News, who have taken up her account of history as a cyclical battle between good and evil — a theory she shared with other 20th Century mystical fascists.

Dark metal bands and American right-wing radio stations also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hindu mythology, which Savitri Devi believed that Hitler was once destined to bring to an end.
Who was Savitri Devi, and why are her ideas being resurrected now? Despite the sari and the name she was a European, born Maximiani Portas to an English mother and Greek-Italian father in Lyon in 1905.
She learned Indian languages, married a Brahmin, and forged an elaborate synthesis of Nazism and Hindu myth
From an early age, she despised all forms of egalitarianism. "A beautiful girl is not equal to an ugly girl," she told an interviewer sent by the Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in 1978.

Riaz Haq said...

Indian Children’s Book Lists Hitler as Leader ‘Who Will Inspire You’
By KAI SCHULTZMARCH 17, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/world/asia/india-hitler-childrens-book.html

An Indian publisher came under fire this week for including Hitler in a children’s book about world leaders who have “devoted their lives for the betterment of their country and people.”

“Dedicated to the betterment of countries and people? Adolf Hitler? This description would bring tears of joy to the Nazis and their racist neo-Nazi heirs,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement.

Published by the Pegasus imprint of India’s B. Jain Publishing Group, the book, called “Leaders” — but listed on the publisher’s website as “Great Leaders” — spotlights 11 leaders “who will inspire you,” according to a product description on the publisher’s website.

On the book’s cover, a stony-faced Hitler is featured alongside Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Also included on the cover is Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has recently come under sharp criticism for refusing to acknowledge atrocities committed by the country’s military against the Rohingya ethnic group.

Earlier this week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is based in Los Angeles, called for the publisher to remove “Great Leaders” from circulation and its online store, where it is sold for about $2.

“Placing Hitler alongside truly great political and humanitarian leaders is an abomination that is made worse as it targets young people with little or no knowledge of world history and ethics,” Rabbi Cooper said in the statement.

Annshu Juneja, a publishing manager at the imprint, said by email that Hitler was featured because, like Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, “his leadership skills and speeches influenced masses.”

“We are not talking about his way of conduct or his views or whether he was a good leader or a bad leader but simply portraying how powerful he was as a leader,” he said.

The publisher had not previously received any complaints about the book, the email said, including from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

In parts of Asia, atrocities committed in Nazi Germany are poorly understood and Hitler is sometimes glorified as a strong, effective leader.

In 2004, reports surfaced of high-school textbooks in the state of Gujarat, which was then led by Mr. Modi, that spoke glowingly of Nazism and fascism.

According to The Times of India, in a section called “Ideology of Nazism,” the textbook said Hitler had “lent dignity and prestige to the German government,” “made untiring efforts to make Germany self-reliant” and “instilled the spirit of adventure in the common people.” Only briefly does the book mention the extermination of millions of Jews and others by the end of World War II.

Dilip D’Souza, an Indian journalist, wrote in a 2012 editorial that when 25 mostly upper-middle-class students taught by his wife at a private French school in Mumbai were asked to name the historical figure they most admired, nine of them picked Hitler.

“ ‘And what about the millions he murdered?’ asked my wife. ‘Oh, yes, that was bad,’ said the kids. ‘But you know what, some of them were traitors.’ ”

The statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that “Great Leaders” had been sold this month at the Krithi International Book Fair in Kochi, a city with a long Jewish heritage. The 48-page book was originally published in 2016, according to the publisher’s website, and it was still available for sale online on Saturday. It is unclear who wrote it.

Riaz Haq said...

The ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Thesis Stalks the World


RAM PUNIYANI | 18 MARCH, 2019


https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/16505/The-Clash-of-Civilisations-Thesis-Stalks-the-World


Breivik also called for cooperation between Jewish groups in Israel, Buddhists in China, and Hindu nationalist groups in India to contain Islam. He wrote, “It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical.”

We must note, that there are strong parallels between Tarrant’s and Breivik’s manifestos and the ideology of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, on the question of the nature of Islam: Muslims and coexistence with Muslims. Much like rightwing parties in the European mainstream, the BJP in India does condemn the violence for name’s sake, but participates in spreading the underlying ideology which is based on Islam-phobia.

Worldwide, this despicable politics is in a way the outcome of the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis propounded by Samuel Huntington. At the end of the Cold War, with the collapse of Soviet Russia, Francis Fukuyama stated that now Western liberal democracy would be the final form of political system.

Building on this, Huntington stated that now the primary conflict would be around civilisations and cultures. Nation-states would remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics would occur between nations and groups belonging to different ‘civilisations’.

“The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” As per this manifesto Western civilisation is faced with a challenge from backward Islamic civilisation, providing the basis for the American policy of attack on many Muslim-majority countries like Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran among others.

To counter this thesis the United Nations undertook the initiative for an ‘Alliance of Civilisations’ when Kofi Annan was Secretary-General. The high-level committee he appointed gave a report which argues that all the progress in the world has been due to the alliances between different cultures and civilisations.

Today we are facing times where American politics of ‘control over oil wells’ led to the formations like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. After the 9/11 attacks perpetrated by men whom the US government formerly supported and armed, the US media popularised the phrase ‘Islamic terrorism’. What we are witnessing today is the fallout of this policy, which was pursued simply to control oil wealth.

The Islam-Muslim phobia this generated, in the West and elsewhere, has led in due course to White Nationalism. Like other forms of majoritarianism and violence, this needs to be countered ideologically, by demonstrating the inherent tendency of alliance between diverse cultures found throughout human history in the world.

Riaz Haq said...

Indian culture and civilization have been enriched by Muslims. The biggest draw of tourists to India is the Taj Mahal built by a Muslim king. The Red Fort where Modi stands every year to deliver Independence Day speech was built by Muslims. Indian musical instruments like sitar and tabla were developed by Muslims. Choli and lehenga worn by Indian women were brought to India by Muslims. Biryani, samosa and nan came to India with Muslims. Indian language has been enriched by Arabic and Farsi words added by Muslims. Even the words Hindi and Hindu are of Arabic/Persian origin.

Now Hindutva rulers are trying to erase Muslim history in India. They can not succeed.

Muslims have given the world algebra, calculus, scientific method, physics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, social sciences and a whole lot more.

Watch Prof Roy Casagranda explain it in detail in the following video:

https://youtu.be/C8M4i9fvq1M