INDIAN INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH INTO TRUE HISTORY
NEWSLETTER NO. 42 OF
1. NEWS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
1.1 Rationalism of Veer Savarkar (in English)
Mr Godbole’s
formidable work running into 750 pages was released at public function at Thane
on
Copies are
available in
1.2 Prince
Charles visits
On 9 February
2004 Prince Charles visited
Under the third
bullet point it says, “
“
[Our comments – Dear oh dear. Look at us Hindus. We do not remember atrocities committed on us by Muslims just two years ago. And here the Iranians remember events of 50 years ago!]
“On the other
hand, Charles is recognised as some one who has gone out of his way to preach
tolerance and understanding of Islam in the West. His visit could provide a
breathing space for the reformers.”
1.3 We Hindus are just as gullible today as we were 300 years ago.
In 2002 a well
wisher of Mr Godbole gave him a copy of book relating to a family named Kelkar
who are involved in the manufacture of essential oils (perfumes). It is a
fascinating story of development of a family business over 80 years
(1922-2002).
On page 43 of the
book, the author writes, ”Today, Globalisation is accepted all over the world.
But the funny thing is that the Industrialised nations set quotas for products
from developing countries. However, when it comes to their exports, the
Industrialised nations preach free market economy and want complete freedom
with no barriers attached.”
“ When our (e.g.
Indian) prices are lower than those of the Western Nations, they impose
‘anti-dumping’ duties on our goods. It is astonishing, however, that when our
prices are higher than those of western products the western governments still
impose ‘anti-dumping’ duties!! “
Who told the author that Globalisation is for good of developing nations? Why do we still get carried away by what the white man says? Is it not time we started to think for ourselves? [Sugandhopasana by Govind Kelkar]
1.4 The
It was quite
clear in February 2003 that
* The timing of
the war was decided by the weather. War could not have been fought in
* Foolish
attitude of Indians
In February 2003
Mr Godbole was in Pune. He was astonished by series of hostile articles written
by a former Admiral of Indian Navy, which appeared in the Marathi language
paper Sakal. The author was furious that Americans would occupy Arab lands and
that the Arabs in neighbouring states were not concerned by this violation!!
The author also suggested
that Saddam Hussein is very popular among the Iraqis. We may call his regime
brutal, but that is what the people are happy with. What right have the
Americans got to topple such a regime?
Both the author
and the newspaper Sakal behaved like lambs when it came to denouncing the
barbaric attacks on
* Show of
scruples by some politicians
Robin Cook, the
Foreign Secretary resigned a day before the war started. Clare Short the
International Development Secretary did so few weeks later. We should not be
carried away by emotions and feel that the two had some high morals. When
We have to
remember that Clare Short has a large number of Muslims in her constituency and
unlike Hindus, Muslims will always try to use their Vote-bank to elect an M.P
of their choice.
* Do you speak
English? No.
Once the war was
over many reporters interviewed Iraqis from all walks of life. But how many of
them spoke English? Hardly any. If the reporters were to come to Hindusthan
even a road sweeper will try to speak in broken English
* The behaviour
of Shias
Americans were
surprised by the reaction of Shias – the suppressed majority. Despite heavy
fighting on the part of Americans, the Shias would not rise in revolt. Why?
Because they were badly let down by President’s father George Bush senior, 10
years ago. After the first Gulf war, he encouraged the Shias to rise and when
they did rise Bush senior did nothing. Shias were mercilessly killed by Saddam
Hussein’s forces. Dear oh dear. These people have such memories! Look at us
Hindus. We do not remember what atrocities were committed on us by Muslims just
2 years ago, let alone 10 years.
Moreover, just a
few weeks after the overthrow of Saddam, the Shias started to say to Americans
“Go home” What an ungrateful lot! Had it been us Hindus
We would have
asked them to stay for ever.
*
The New Iraqi
Government took power of their affairs on 1 June 2004. Their constitution
clearly states that
* Treatment of
Iraqi PoWs by Americans and the British.
In April/May we
saw horrific pictures of savage treatment of Iraqis by Americans. They never
denied maltreatment. However, it raises two questions – If this is how
Americans behave today, what barbarities had they committed during Second World
War. Mr Godbole got some glimpse in two books – Advance to Barbarism, which he
read in his local library in
The second
question is – how brutally did the Americans treat Indian Tribes in
* Why did the
Domestic violence
affects large number of white women in
On 17 July 2000
Danielie Demetriou reported for The Daily Telegraph
The number of
women reporting domestic violence doubled in parts of
Charities say the
problem cuts across all social backgrounds, with many professional women
suffering violence. Women are now more likely to report to police, although it
is estimated that only one in five victims does so.
As many as 35,000
women are thought to have been attacked each month by their husbands or
boyfriends last year. The dramatic increase in reported incidents also reflects
how the stigma attached to being “a
battered wife” is beginning to fade, according to domestic violence charities.
“There are many
professional and well-educated women married to professional and well-educated
men who have been victims of domestic violence,” said Sandra Horley, chief
executive of Refuge, which provides assistance to victims of abuse and is
contacted by 260,000 women every year. “ It is a widespread problem. It cuts
all racial and social backgrounds. We have seen abusive dustbin men and
lawyers, lorry drivers and judges
The research was
carried out by the Racial and Violent Crime Task Force. It reveals that 76 per
cent of the 8,000 incidents dealt with by the department every month are cases
of domestic violence. Race related incidents account for 22 per cent and
“homophobic” cases for two per cent. A regional breakdown of cases of domestic
violence reported to the police also shows that the number of incidents has
doubled in parts of the country in the last 12 months. In Avon and
“More women are
coming forward to the police, because more women have the confidence to do so,”
said Ms Horley. “It should not be up to an intimidated victim to press charges.
The police should press charges more frequently, which could act as an
effective deterrent. Domestic violence is a serious and violent criminal
offence. It leads directly to the disintegration of the family and it is a
major domestic problem. We are hearing from more and more women, but helps is
limited. Refuge centres are vastly under-funded and domestic violence has not
been regarded as a serious crime until relatively recently.”
A spokesman for
the Home Office said:”It is definitely the sort of crime that the Government is
encouraging greater reporting of and we hope these figures reflect greater
confidence in the system that, if you do report it, something will be done
about it.”
On 21 March 2004
Ian Kirby reported for News of the World
Wife-beaters are
to be swept quickly into court in a new government blitz on domestic violence.
The cases will be
given top priority with a target to deal with them within six weeks. And
victims will no longer have to give evidence in front of their tormentors –
judges will be able to accept written statements.
Other measures in
the forthcoming Domestic Violence Bill include
* Brutes with
more than one conviction being put on a new national offenders register.
* Tougher
sentences from judges.
* Battered wives
being warned when jailed offenders are released.
* A ban on thugs
returning to victims’ areas.
The new laws will
also mean accused batterers would not lose their right to claim self-defence.
Lord Chancellor
Lord Falconer will unveil the plans tomorrow with Solicitor General Harriet
Harman. He is determined to fight a crime that sees two women killed each week
by a partner or ex.
He told
officials: “ The legal system has been too slow for far too long. These victims
have been forced to spend months or years living in fear because of crimes that
are not their fault. It is time to draw a line under these delays. Fast track
justice helps a legal system to be seen as more effective. But most importantly
it helps the victims.”
Officials say
there is backlog of 20,000 domestic violence cases.
On 19 April the
(Our comment –
How about a Hindu priest? That will never happen. Hindu organisations to not
attend to such earthly matters!)
In this context
it is interesting to note that our friend Pandit Ramakrushnayya teaches
Sanskrit in
On 1 February
2002, Ian Herbert reported for The Independent
Son’s hunt for
father exposes betrayal of war heroes.
Government
documents uncovered during a man’s search for his lost father have revealed how
thousands of Chinese servicemen who served
At least 2,000
Chinese, whose seafaring excellence was put to use by the wealthy Liverpool
shipping lines, were rounded up by police officers between March and July 1946
and sent back to
The Chinese were
considered “undesirable” and the city authorities were “anxious to secure the
housing accommodation” they occupied, according to the minute of a Home Office
meeting of October 1945 to discuss “repatriation of Chinese seamen”, 117 of
them had British-born wives.
Perhaps the most
remarkable aspect of the policy, which is also exposed in correspondence
between the Ministry of Transport and War and the Liverpool Chief Constable, is
its omission from historical analysis of the period.
Professor Tony
Lee, a
The story as
uncovered by Keith Cocklin, 55, a retired merchant seaman who began
investigating the disappearance of his father, Soong Kwai Sing, just before his
own birth in May 1946. Mr Cocklin, whose work is featured in a BBC North West
documentary entitled
His plea for
information through a BBC local radio programme elicited the testimony of Steve
Crawshaw, a former fitter who built bunks in cargo holds to sleep he returning
Chinese. There were also witnesses to police raids in which the Chinese men
were rounded up.” We just saw them getting into the trucks. If they ran, they
[the police] ran after them,” one witness, Larry Kee, said.
Correspondence
with Maria Lin Wong, who had investigated her own father’s
Mr Cocklin, who
said his discoveries had made him want to “declassify” himself as a British
citizen, knows his father was shipped to Hong Long, then onwards to
On 19 April 2003
Jonathan Glancey reported for The Guardian
No one, least of
all the British should be surprised at the state of anarchy in Iraq. We have
been therefore. We know the territory, its long and miasmic history, the
all-but-impossible diplomatic balance to be struck between the cultures and
ambitions of Arabs, Kurds, Shia and Sunni, of Assyrians, Turks, Americans,
French, Russians and of our own desire to keep an economic and strategic
presence there.
Iraq is the
product of a lying empire. The British carved it duplicitously from ancient
history; thwarted Arab hopes, Ottoman loss, the dunes of Mesopotamia and
mountains of Kurdistan at the end of First World War. Unsurprisingly, anarchy
and insurrection were there from the start. The British responded with gas
attacks by the army in the south, bombing by the fledging RAF in both north
and south. When Iraqi tribes stood up for themselves, we unleashed the flying
dogs of war to “police” them. Terror bombing, night 2bombing, heavy bombers,
delayed action bombs (particularly lethal against children) were all developed
during raids on mud, stone and reed villages during Britain’s League of Nations
mandate. The mandate ended in 1932; the semi-colonial monarchy in 1958. But
during the period of direct British rule, Iraq proved a useful testing ground
for newly forged weapons of both limited and mass destruction, as well as
techniques for controlling imperial outposts and vassal states.
The RAF was first
ordered to Iraq to quell Arab and Kurdish uprisings, to protect recently
discovered oil reserves, to guard Jewish settlers in Palestine and to keep
Turkey at bay. Some mission, yet it had already proved itself an effective
imperial police force in both Afghanistan and Somaliland (today’s Somalia) in
1919-20. British and US forces have been back regularly to bomb these hubs of
recalcitrance ever since.
Winston
Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF,
somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to
control Iraq. Reliance on the air force promised to cut these numbers to just
4,000 and 10,000. Churchill’s confidence was soon repaid.
An uprising of
more than 100,000 armed tribesmen against the British occupation swept through
Iraq in the summer of 1920. In went the RAF. It flew missions totalling 4,008
hours, dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds for the loss of nine
men killed, seven wounded and 11 aircraft destroyed behind rebel lines. The
rebellion was thwarted, with nearly 9,000 Iraqis killed. Even so, concern was
expressed in Westminster: the operation had cost more than the entire
British-funded Arab rising against the Ottoman Empire in 1917-18.
The RAF was
vindicated as British military expenditure in Iraq fell from £23m in 1921 to
less than £4m five years later. This was despite the fact that the number of
bombing raids increased after 1923 when Squadron Leader Arthur Harris – the
future hammer of Hamburg and Dresden, whose statue stands in Fleet Street in
London today – took command of 45 Squadron, Adding bomb-racks to Vickers Vernon
troops carriers. Harris more or less invented the heavy bomber as well as night
“terror” raids. Harris did not use gas himself – though RAF had employed
mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while army had gassed Iraqi
rebels in 1920 “with excellent moral
effect.”
Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used “against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment.” He dismissed objections as “unreasonable.” “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes….to spread a lively terror…” In today’s terms “the Arabs” needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.
Conventional
raids, however, proved to be an effective deterrent. They brought Sheikh
Mahmoud, the most persistent of Kurdish rebels to heel, at little cost. Writing
in 1921, Wing Commander J A Chalmier suggested that the best way to demoralise local
people was to concentrate bombing on the “most inaccessible village of the most
prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be
collected … the attack with bombs and machine guns must be relentless and
unremitting and carried on continuously day and night, on houses, inhabitants,
crops and cattle.”
“ The Arab and
Kurd .. now knows,” reported Squadron Leader Harris after several such raids,
“what real bombing means … within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be
practically wiped out, and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured, by
four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory
as warriors, no effective means of escape.”
In his memoirs of
the crushing of the 1920 Iraqi uprising, Lt General Sir Aylmer L Haldane,
quotes his own orders for the punishment of any Iraqi found in possession of
weapons “with the utmost severity”; The village where he resides will be
destroyed …pressure will be brought on the inhabitants by cutting off of water
power … the area being cleared of the necessaries of life.”
He added the
warning : “Burning a village properly takes a long time, an hour or more
according to size.”
Punitive British
bombing continued throughout the 1920s. As eyewitness account by Saleh ‘Umar al
Jabrim describes a raid in February 1923 on a village in southern Iraq, where
Bedouin were celebrating 12 weddings. After a visit from the RAF, a woman, two
boys, a girl and four camels were left dead. There were many wounded. Perhaps
to please his British interrogators, Saleh declared; “These casualties are from
God and no one can be blamed.”
One RAF officer,
Air Commodore Lionel Charlton, resigned in 1924 when he visited a hospital
after such a raid and faced armless and legless civilian victims. Others held
less generous views of those under their control.
At the time of
the Arab revolt in Palestine in the late 1930s, Air Commodore Harris, as he
then was, declared that “the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand,
and sooner or later it will have to be applied.”, As in 1931, so in 2003.
The web site is jonathan.glancey@guardian.co.uk
(Our comments
1.Just shows how
little we know of modern world history.
2 Despite having
treated Arabs and Kurds with such barbarity, the British had the audacity of
complaining about German bombing raids on their cities in the 1940s!
3. We should not
be carried away by emotions. Our principle must always be – what’s in it for
Hindus? )
When Mr Godbole
brought Collins Atlas for his daughter in 1976 ‘The Persian Gulf’ can be
clearly seen in it. In 1998 Godbole’s daughters presented him with a huge
Philip’s Atlas of the World published in association with the Royal
Geographical Society. And surprise, surprise, there is no Persian Gulf.
It is simply called the Gulf. All the other Gulfs are there, e.g. Gulf of
Finland, Gulf of Mexico. What happened?
The Gulf Handbook
of 1979 states, “This region is centred on a stretch of water, separating Iran
from the Arabian Peninsula, which the Iranians call the Persian Gulf and the
Arabs the Arabian Gulf. Westerners, wanting to remain neutral, prefer to call
it just the Gulf and have extended the name to describe the whole region.”
(page 3)
In a similar
manner, after Indian independence, Savarkar suggested to Nehru that the name
Arabian Sea should be changed. It does not belong to Arabia. Savarkar suggested
that Arabian Sea should be named the Sindhusagar and the sea on east of India
be called the Gangasagar. Nehru, having no backbone, did not accept this
suggestion.
It is interesting
to know what the Arabs themselves called the sea between Arabia and west of
India. George Sale (1697–1736), an Englishman lived in Arabia for more than 20
years. He wrote a book on Koran, published 1734. It shows a map of Arabia and
the ‘Arabian Sea’ is clearly shown as ‘Indian Ocean’. It would be worth finding
who coined the name ‘Arabian Sea’
3. BEHAVIOUR OF CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS TODAY
3.1 THE CHRISTIANS
On 15 November
2002 The Sun reported Divorce wedding ban axed.
A ban on divorced
people remarrying in Anglican churches was lifted yesterday.
The ancient edict
was rescinded by the Church of England’s highest governing body, the general
Synod.
Bishops, clergy
and lay members voted by 308 to 110 to revoke the rule.
Divorced people
may now remarry in church under “exceptional circumstances.”
But individual
clergymen can still refuse to conduct the ceremony.
The move could
now open the door for Prince Charles to wed his long-term partner Camilla
Parker Bowles.
3.1.2 No
sympathy for rape victims
Three pharmacists
were fined after refusing to give a rape victim the morning after pill. Gene
Herr, 33 said he objected on religious grounds to providing the emergency
contraception prescription. He said he was sacked six days later, along with
two colleagues who also refused to serve the woman. She was forced to go to a
nearby pharmacy. Mr Herr, of Denton, Texas, said he wanted no part in the
potential killing of an embryo, ‘I went in the back room and prayed about it,’
added Mr Herr, who worked for Florida based Eckerd for five years. The company
refused to confirm the sackings, saying only that ‘appropriate disciplinary
action’ was taken.
All such
conscientious objectors do not answer the simple question – what would they do
if the victim were their own daughter?
On 10 July 2003
Julia Neuberger, rabbi and chief executive of the King’s Fund, Cavendish
Square, London W1 wrote to Evening Standard –
Anti-Semitic view
of Old Testament.
I am rarely moved
to cry “anti-Semitic” about the articles in the Evening Standard or elsewhere,
and believe the allegation is made too frequently by my co-religionists,
particularly as far as Israel is concerned. But Brian Sewell’s attack (Sex, the
Bible and the real world, 8 July) on what he sees as the Old Testament of the
Jews, describing it as a “compilation of convenient myth and a history of racial
justification and aggrandisement”, is both deeply unsympathetic and widely
inaccurate.
First, the Hebrew
Bible has numerous strands in it, and his failure to quote both the anger and
the comfort expressed by the prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Micah
suggests he simply lacks knowledge.
Second, the fault line does not lie between religions – Judaism and Christianity – but between those who argue that the bible (or, in Judaism’s case, the five books of Moses) is divine, unchanging and a single revelation, and those who say, on the contrary, that revelation is a process that continues through all generations, and that biblical texts are man-made and of their time.
I take the
latter, liberal view, and believe that the prohibition on homosexuality is one
made by men who felt threatened by it. However, whatever any of us feel about
Cannon Jeffrey John – and I for one am deeply shocked by the intolerance and
smug self-satisfaction of his opponents – blaming the Jews and the “Jewish”
Bible for what has happened is wrong, dangerous and plain ignorant.
On 26 February
2004, The Guardian reported
At least 48
people have been killed in the latest outbreak of religious violence in Plateau
state, central Nigeria, the police said yesterday.
They were hacked
down on Tuesday when Muslim warriors attacked Yelwa town in the mainly
Christian district of Shendam.
The Plateau
police commissioner, Innocent Ilozuoke, told reporters in the state capital,
Jos : “The victims were pursued to a church … they ran to for refuge and were
killed. Forty-eight of them died instantly.”
Security sources
said the attackers’ guerrilla tactics suggested that they were hired
mercenaries from Nigeria’s northern neighbourhood, Chad and Niger.
Mr Ilozuoke said
troops and police had been sent to the area to try to contain the violence, but
no arrests had yet been made.
More than 100
people have been killed in clashes between Christians and Muslims in southern
Plateau in the past two years: in 2001 more than 1,000
were killed.
And about 10,000
have died in communal and religious violence in Nigeria since 15 years of
military rule ended with President Olusegun Obasanjo’s election in 1999
Reuters, Jos
On 4 June 2003
Juliette Terzieff reported from Peshawar, for The Guardian -
Early every day
after morning prayers Mohammed Zulfikar spends more than an hour setting up a
small kerbside stall, at which he will remain until long past sundown, selling
music cassettes and CDs.
He used to make
500-600 rupees (£5to7) a day – good money in a place where more than 40% live
on less than a pound a day – but business has dropped considerably in the past
six months as the government has pursued a campaign to “Islamise” the already
conservative North West Frontier province of Pakistan.
People still stop
to look and buy, but most look over their shoulder to see who is watching. He
has stopped selling CDs of such potentially objectionable artists as Jennifer
Lopez and Madonna, hoping to avoid the fate of dozens of other businesses here
picked on by religious vigilantes.
Since the United
Action Forum (MMA) of six religious parties swept into power vowing to
eradicate social evil and create the ideal Islamic society, groups of young men
have taken to attacking cinemas, music shops, and billboards showing women.
Musicians and dancers have been driven from the province by systematic
harassment, and the mobs have torn cassette players out of buses and cut cable
television network connections.
“We all support
trying to achieve a true Islamic society but we don’t want the Taliban system
here, we don’t want that brutality, that fear,” Zulfikar said.
In this border
town’s main thoroughfare, the ancient Grand Trunk Road from Kabul to Delhi,
there is evidence of growing apprehension. When the call to prayer is heard,
shopkeepers and stallholders and public transport workers shut down their
operations to avoid the attention of MMA supporters.
The few women now
visible on the streets scurry quickly along, covered in the head-to-toe burka
or tightly wrapped in large chadors.
Abdul Khan, a
political analyst in the city, said: “What you’ve got is a group of people
intent upon imposing their will on the general public, taking away people’s
rights to make life choices for themselves and their families.”
In the past month
the MMA has introduced mandatory prayer calls for government employees, banned
shirts and trousers as school uniform in favour of the loose fitting
traditional shalwar kameez, and announcement that male doctors will not be
allowed to treat women.
On Monday the
provincial assembly voted unanimously to adopt sharia law.
Although sharia,
based on the moral and religious codes of Koran, is enshrined in the Pakistani
constitution, this is the first time it will be enforced.
The government
bill to set up an Islamic monitoring and enforcement body is expected to
encounter fierce but futile opposition in the assembly later this week.
Copies leaked to
the media show that it bans honour killing, child labour, and bribe-taking. A
muhtasib (religious law officer) appointed by the chief minister will monitor
the behaviour of civil servants for corruption, define the parameters of
acceptable “Islamic” behaviour, and ensure general compliance with Islamic
duties. A hisba force likely to be drawn from the existing police and tribal
law enforcers will carry out his decisions.
Palwasha Bangash
of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said: “This will effectively open
the door wide to violations of people’s rights under a banner – religion – that
no one can dare challenge for fear of being severely punished.”
The draft act
sets a penalty of six months in jail and a fine for disobeying the muhtasib or
his force. As the muhtasib’s writ will surpass even that of the provincial
assembly, there will be little recourse for redress of grievances. But
MMA officials
deny that the system resembles that of the Taliban. Mohammed Kurshid, of the
provincial department, said: ”Ours is a revolutionary plan aimed at eradicating
the cause of social, economic and other evils in our society to promote justice
for everyone.”
Many leaders of
the MMA, like leaders of the Taliban, are followers of the Deoband
Daqr-ul-Uloom (Centre of Learning in Deoband), which teaches that music is
sinful, educating girls is useless, and men are inherently more intelligent
than women.
Mr Khan said:
”Pakistan is not Afghanistan, and they are not the Taliban, but that doesn’t
mean certain enforcers or certain villages won’t adopt the strictest forms of
interpretation. But with these measures comes the troubling possibility that
the [province] could become a heaven for fundamentalist or militant groups at a
time when Pakistan can ill afford it.”
On 17 February
2004 David Blair in Peshawar reported for The Daily Telegraph
Brutal and
extreme Islamists have taken power on the North-West Frontier
Fame was no
protection for one of Pakistan’s most celebrated pop stars when he indulged in
the “un-Islamic” practice of singing in public. Gulzar Alam was beaten with
rifle butts when 20 policemen armed with AK47s raided a wedding party where he
was performing. “They are trying to be the Taliban,” said Mr Alam “They are
trying to impose this Islamic system. But music is our tradition and it
reflects our culture.” Covered in bruises, he was dragged to the cells in the
frontier city of Peshawar and locked up for four hours before friends secured
his release. Mr Alam, 42, said: “ The police said, “This music is banned.” They
swore at me. They treated me like a very lo person. This province has become a
police state.”
Mr Alam has
fallen foul of the Islamist coalition running Pakistan’s North-West Frontier
Province. For the first time, extreme religious parties have won outright
control of this crucial area near border with Afghanistan. They have a simple
manifesto: to reinvent the Taliban in a corner of Pakistan. Since winning power
less than 18 months ago the coalition has banned anyone from playing music or
singing in public and confiscated thousands of music tapes from the bazaars.
These were heaped on a large bonfire in Peshawar and set alight by the local
police chief. Videotapes of test cricket matches were also thrown on to the
flames because the authorities had noticed that shots of crowds showed fleeting
glimpses of unveiled women.
The ritual – a
conscious imitation of the frequent bonfires of “un-Islamic” material staged by
the Taliban regime in Kabul – was followed by the closure of Peshawar’s only
theatre.
Near the deserted
Nishter Hall, once the centre of a community of 350 actors and musicians, a
billboard carrying an advertisement for shoes was damaged. Black paint covered
the faces of two women. Across the province almost all billboards carrying
pictures of women have been torn down or sprayed. At the Shabistan cinema in
Peshawar colourful hoardings that once tempted passers by with pictures of
women clad in bright saris and men brandishing guns have been removed. Anodyne
pictures of eagles and lions have replaced them.
Mr Alam believes
that the Islamists are waging a vendetta against the entire artistic community.
As the province’s most famous performer, he has been singled out for
harassment. Two months after beating him up at the wedding party, police raided
Mr Alam’s house in Peshawar’s Old City. By chance, he was away, so they
arrested his brother, Alam Khan, 25, and his sons, Salman, 19, and Shan, 13.
they were beaten up and held in the cells overnight on trumped –up charges of
kidnapping two Afghan children.
When the
provincial assembly meets next month the authorities will press ahead with the
next stage of their campaign. They will introduce a law creating a new body
modelled on the Taliban’s ministry for promotion of virtue and prevention of
vice.” This will have sweeping powers to intervene in any area of life and
uphold “Islamic standards.” The law will also create a parallel police and
judicial system to implement a Sharia Law Act passed by the provincial assembly
last year” This is the most dangerous development.” Said Afrasiab Khattak, from
the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. “It will allow the government to
intervene in anything, without challenge from the courts.”
The Muttahids
Majlis-e-Amal coalition, which runs the provincial government, insists that
there is no cause for concern. Malik Zafar Azam, the justice and parliamentary
affairs minister, shies away from comparisons with Taliban and points out the
Islamist won 67 of the local assembly’s 124 seats in free elections in 2002.
“We are doing what people want us to do,” he said, " We have given them
security. You can go anywhere you want in safety here.”
The Islamists
have also pledged to segregate tertiary education by building a mew women’s
university in Peshawar, with women forced to wear veils. “The value of a person
is in one’s mind. not in what one wears,” said Saman Mushtaq, 20, a business
studies student at Peshawar University.
“They should not
impose the veil upon us.”
In another column
David Blair reported – Gangs of gunmen tell barbers to stop shaving.
South Waziristan
is one of seven “tribal areas” lining Pakistan’s frontier with Afghanistan.
Those enclaves, officially exempt from the laws of Pakistan, are controlled by
no one except local tribal chiefs. They were strongholds of support for the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The campaign against barbers is part of a surge
of support for Taliban-style rules in the frontier areas.
3.2.4. Shias
and Sunnis at each other’s throats in Pakistan
On 1 June the
paper Metro reported on page 5 –
At least 16
people were killed and 55 injured when a bomb exploded in a Shia Muslim mosque
in Pakistan yesterday. About a dozen of the injured were critically hurt. The
blast, which happened during evening prayers, caused massive damage to the
building in the port city of Karachi. The dome was broken while the blast
shattered the windows of a nearby office block. Waiting relatives looked for
loved ones under the rubble.
Fruit seller
Ghulam Hussein said: ‘I heard a big explosion and I saw two injured people
falling on to the road bleeding. One had no legs.’ Saqlain Raza, who was
parking his motorcycle when the blast happened, said: ‘one three-year old child
was bleeding from the head and stomach. I carried the boy out and a car took
him to hospital.’
Another
worshipper called Saddiqan added: ‘I saw two dead bodies without limbs lying on
the ground.’ Angry crowds of Shia Muslims gathered after the blast and set fire
to two police cars before ransacking government offices. Many rioters also
chanted anti-American slogans. Police fired tear gas to disperse the mob.
Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf said he was gravely concerned at the
violence. The Interior Ministry said it was too early to say who carried out
the attack but it appeared to be linked sectarian violence between rival
militants from the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam. It is feared it was in
retaliation for the assassination of a Sunni cleric in the city on Sunday.
Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, who had called for holy war against America, was shot
dead when his car was sprayed with bullets. Karachi is braced for more violence
today when the relatives of the blast victims bury their dead.
On 2 June, Metro
reported on page 2 Violence at funerals for bomb dead
Protesters
clashed with police at funerals for the 19 people killed in Monday’s
Bomb attack on a
mosque in Pakistan. Riot police fired tear gas to force back thousands of
people who gathered for the ceremonies in the city of Karachi. Angry mourners
pelted police with stones and torched vehicles. Some beat their chests and
chanted ‘God is greatest’ while others waved iron bars and shouted: ‘Down with
America!’ Shia cleric Hasan Zafar Naqvi said: ‘We have no faith in police
because they failed to protect or mosques.’ Pakistan’s government fears the
bomb attack on the Ali Raza Imam Bargah mosque was the latest in a space of
tit-for-tat sectarian violence following the murder of a Sunni Muslim cleric on
Sunday.
On 23 January
2003 Stephen Deal reported for the Metro
A Muslim cleric
urged his followers to kill enemies of Islam in a holy fight against the West,
the Old Bailey heard yesterday.
Abdullah
El-Faisal used his influence to ‘preach murder and hatred’; telling young
Muslims they should kill Hindus, Jews, Americans and non-believers.
The 49-year-old
compared killing of Hindus with chemical weapons to ‘spraying cockroaches’, it
was claimed.
In tapes of his
sermons, entitled Us Versus Them, Jihad and No Peace with the Jews, El-Faisal
recommended dropping a nuclear bomb on India and burning the bodies of the dead
to run power stations.The deaths of women and children were acceptable, he
said, and killing a ‘kaffar’, or non-Muslim, would guarantee a place in Heaven.
‘How wonderful it
is to kill a kuffar’, he allegedly said, ‘You crawl on his back and while you
are pushing him down into hellfire you are going into paradise.’
David Perry,
prosecuting, told the jury: ‘His view was entirely clear – liberty would not be
achieved by democracy so the way forward can never be the ballot – the way
forward is the bullet. Our motto is “might is right.”
El-Faisal, of
Stratford, East London, denies charges of soliciting to murder and distributing
material, which might incite racial hatred. The trail continues.
On the same day
Tania Branigan reported for the Guardian
Abdullah
El-Faisal, 39, endorsed the use of nuclear and chemical weapons and told
audiences that the proper definition of jihad as to wage war on non-Muslims.
“It is Islam versus democracy. It is Allah Versus Satan. It is Muslims versus
unbelievers,” he is alleged to have said in a sermon.
“He was preaching
intolerance, but worse than that, preaching murder.” David Perry told the
court, opening the prosecution case. ”The message he was conveying is clear; to
kill a kaffir [non-believer] is good.”
El-Faisal, a former
Salvation Army member, delivered the lectures to groups of young Muslim men and
women at venues around the country and distributed the recordings through
bookshops, the court heard
“The way forward
can never be the ballot. The way forward is the bullet,” he told listeners.
He urged them to
learn how to load missiles, fly planes and drive tanks and said martyrs who
died fighting for Allah would feel no pain and go to paradise. He described
France, the US and the UK as legitimate targets and urged followers to “fly
into Israel and do whatever you can.”
“You can go to India and if you see a Hindu walking down the road you are allowed to kill him and take his money. Is that clear?” he said.
On other tapes he
claimed Jews practised black magic and said they would be killed by Muslims
very soon, as they had been by Hitler
El-Faisal, who is
Jamaican, converted to Islam at 16, changing his name from William Forest. In
1983, he moved to South America later studying Islam at a university in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia. He was sent to Britain to preach after his graduation and moved
to Stratford, east London in the mid 1990s where he established “study circles”
of up to 150 young men and women.
The police began
their investigation after finding tapes of sermons in a car they stopped in
Dorset in December 2001, They brought similar tapes and videos at Islamic
bookshops in London and seized more evidence when they arrested El-Faisal at
his home last February.
On 24 January
2003, dealing with the same case, Sam Lister reported for The Times – Muslim
cleric ‘pledged virgins’
A Muslim cleric
promised an audience of teenage boys 72 virgins in paradise if they died as
religious martyrs in a war against all Jews, Hindus and “unbelievers” of the
Islamic faith.
A jury at the Old
Bailey was shown a video of a talk given by Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, after the
September 11 attacks urging Muslim youths to train with Kalishnikov rifles in
their school holidays and not to worry if a murder involved the “collateral
damage” of women and children. A baby could be heard crying during part of the
recording, and there were sounds of children’s voices in the audience.
The prosecution
alleges that the Jamaican-born convert stepped outside his role as a
spiritual leader to preach race hate and murder.
After his arrest in February last year, el-Faisal claimed that his teachings were taken from the Koran.
Our comments – will the Hindus ever open their eyes? Or will they continue to believe that Islam is also a path to God like Hinduism. This person has probably never met a Hindu, but see what happened when he was converted to Islam!!
Former Archbishop
Carey spoke out against Islam. He said that Islam has not promoted democracy.
On Friday 26 March the Daily Telegraph reported his remarks on the front
page “Islam has contributed nothing to civilisation for hundreds of years.”
On 31 March The
Daily Mail published two letters on the subject.
Ralph Ellis of
Chester, Cheshire wrote –
Congratulations
to Lord Carey for articulating the private thoughts of the frustrated many in
this country. We have a problem with Islam across the world and more
importantly, with Islamo-Britons influenced more by clerics in Iran than the
politics of Westminster or the culture of our education system.
The English civil
wars were fostered by a similar brand of religious intolerance and foreign
interference in domestic affairs. The end result of this turmoil was achieved
by separation of Church and State. We now need a “Mosque of England”, run by
British clerics divorced from Middle Eastern politics. In time, it would provide
a bastion against sectarian terrorism.
Like the Jesuits
before them, many extremist Muslims believe that they are allowed to lie if
this is of benefit to Islam. Lord Carey has ignited the torch and we need men
of equal courage to use that beacon to promote the long overdue era of Islamic
enlightenment.
S S Moid of
Chorleywood, Herts, on the other hand wrote –
Lord Carey is
correct about Hussain, Hassan and Hosney being authoritarians who retain their
hold by ‘massive investment in security forces’ (Mail), but they owe their
existence to U.S protection, humoured as ‘allies’ for serving the
Neo-Conservatives agenda. The exploitation by autocratic rulers imposed by
imperialist powers hasn’t changed the deprived lot of common man in Muslim
lands, but Muslims have contributed a moral dimension to social trends, sorely
needed to combat the ongoing drift into decadence. As for the divine
injunctions spoken by the Holy Prophet, it has remained the unshakable faith of
Muslims throughout centuries that what is preserved in Holy Koran is the
immutable word of God for all time to come. The text remains unparalleled in
the glory of
literary Arabic.
Of all people,
the former Archbishop should have known that the evil consequences of the
infirmity of faith among those given to liberal ways are the bane of today’s
society.
On 24 April 2003, Stuart Garratt of Newcastle
wrote to the London paper Metro
Charles Gate
makes two basic flaws when he suggests that Iraq should join the EU (Metro, Tue
22 April) Firstly, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was secular already and, if anything,
will now move closer to being an Islamic state.
Secondly, not all
Western nations are secular. The US is, in reality, a religious democracy. Most
Americans consider themselves strongly religious and a large proportion are
evangelical – and that includes George Bush.
In some US
counties, the education system has replaced evolution theory with creationism,
which is hardly something that could be described as secular.
On 27 March 2004
Peter McKenna of Liverpool wrote to the Independent
Mils Kignton’s
Jewish God (“It’s not every god that gets their own planet”, 24 March) has got
to be joking: “has he or Allah ever ordered people to kill each other? Where
was it written …?”
In Deuteronomy
7.2 – “Thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them”;
In I Samuel 15.3
– “ slay man and woman, infant and suckling …”;
In Surah al-Nisa
4:89 –“if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find
them.” And so smiting and slaying never stops.
Some 60% of
Iraqis are Shias and so are 90% of Iranians. But, Iraqis are Arabs by race and
it was Arabs who conquered Iran. Hence the historical feud between the two. So
much that when Iranians visited holy Shia sites in Iraq, they used to be
insulted and humiliated.
In 1980 Vijay
Parulkar visited Iran. He wrote a series called Khaibarnama. He tells us -
King Shah Abbas
who ruled Iran from 1587 to 1629 was a clever man. Iranians are Shias and used
to make pilgrimages to holy places Najaf (An Najaf) and Karbala (both in Iraq).
But they used to be insulted by Arab Iraqis. Therefore the King declared that
Iranians should make pilgrimages to shrine of Imam Reza of Mashahad (eighth
Imam of the Shia sect) and Hazarat-I-Masumeh of Qom (Kumindan), it is tomb of
Fatima, sister of Imam Reza. Shah Abbas walked for 28 days from Isfahan to
Mashahad (tomb of Imam Reza). He strengthened the spirit of Shiism by developing
Mashad, the shrine of the eighth Imam, and encouraging its importance as a
centre of pilgrimage.
The interesting
thing is that it is rooted in Pre-Islamic days of Zoroshtran Kings some 2 to 2
½ thousand years ago. The Zoroastrian kings of Sassani dynasty used to walk
from Ctesiphon (36 kilometres southwest of Baghdad) to Azerbaijan and pay
respects to the holy fire in temples there.
Gulf Handbook
confirms this on page 184
Shahpur – South
of Lake Rezayieh itself is Mosandoab, from which a road goes to the great
Sassanian religious centre of Takte Sulaiman. This was the site of the Royal
Fire Sanctuary to which Sassanian monarchs made a pilgrimage on foot from
Ctesiphon, their capital (now in Iraq).
Gulf Handbook
also gives some more interesting information -
IRAN
* Social
background – Iran today is a linguistic and cultural potpourri, which in
addition to indigenous ‘Iranians’ includes Afghans, Arabs, Baluchis and Turks
(p117)
* Language and
religion –The Government is worried about the growing number of foreign words
which have found their way into Farsi, the official language which is deeply
influenced by Arabic but whose origins are in the Indo-European languages.
Efforts are being made to find Persian equivalents for the hundreds of Arabic,
Turkish and more recently French and English words that have slipped into
everyday usage. (This was in 1979) … Shi’ite Moslems make up over 90 per cent
of Iran’s total population, with Sunni Moslems (seven per cent), Christian
(Assyrian and Armenian), Jews and Zoroastrians accounting for the remainder of
Iran’s faithful.
IRAQ
Although 95 per
cent of the population is Muslim, Islam in Iraq, unlike other Islamic states,
does not serve as a unifying force. Half Muslim population is Sunni living in
north and central region; other half is Shia living in central region and the
south. Thus the division is religious and regional.
The
Christian-Muslim distinction, though certainly less important than the
Sunni-Shia divide, is still significant, especially in social life. There is,
for example, very little intermarriage between Muslims and Christians. The
Christians, numbering about 400,000, are fragmented into various sects –
Chaldean, Syriac Catholics, Syriac Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Greek Orthodox,
Armenian Orthodox and Protestants. With exception of the Armenian Orthodox,
these Christian groups are Arab in language and race.
Ethnic
differences present another problem. About 80 per cent of the population is
Arab, although only a small proportion has an unmixed ancestry like the Arabs
of Saudi Arabia or Jordan (there are about 95,000 Bedouins living in desert
areas). The largest non-Arab ethnic group is the Kurds who account for about 14
to 16 per cent of the total population and who are concentrated in the
mountainous region of north-eastern Iraq. The Kurds ethnically Aryan and
have their own language
Racially akin to
the Kurds are the Yazidis, settled in the Jebel Sinjar area of northern Iraq.
They form tightly knit and isolated communities. They have their own language
and unique religion, which incorporates pagan, Christian and Islamic elements.
There are also
the Assyrians and Turcomans
[pages 224-226]
On 7 June 2002
Daniel McGrory reported for The Times
A damning dossier
sent by Kathryn Bolkovac to her employers detailing UN workers’ involvement in
the sex trade in Bosnia, cost the American her job with international police
force.
She was sacked
after disclosing that UN peacekeepers went to night clubs where girls as young
as 15 were forced to dance naked and have sex with customers, and that UN
personnel and international aid workers were linked to prostitution rings in
the Balkans.
After a two-year
battle, an employment tribunal ruled yesterday that Ms Bolkovac was unfairly
dismissed by DynCrop, an American company whose branch in Salisbury, Wiltshire,
dealt with the contracts of the American officers working for the international
police force in Bosnia. There will be a further hearing at Southampton to
decide the amount of compensation DynCorp must pay Ms Bolkovac.
During her time
in Bosnia as an investigator, Ms Bolkovac, 41, uncovered evidence of girls who
refused to have sex being beaten and raped in bars by their pimps while
peacemakers stood and watched. She discovered that one UN policeman who was
supposed to be investigating the sex trade paid £700 to a bar owner for an
underage girl who he kept captive in his apartment to use in his own
prostitution racket.
She detailed her
findings in a series of explicit e-mails to DynCorp, but after first being
demoted and transferred from the investigation she was sacked for allegedly
falsifying her timekeeping records.
Charles Twiss,
the tribunal chairman, said: “We have considered DynCrop’s explanation of why
they dismissed her and find it completely unbelievable. There is no doubt
whatever that the reason for her dismissal was that she made a protected
disclosure and was unfairly dismissed.”
There are
powerful voices in support of her claims, including that of Madeleine Rees, the
head of the UN Human Rights Commission office in Sarajevo, who is in no doubt
that trafficking in women started with the arrival of the international
peacekeepers in 1992.. ……
Richard Monk, a
former senior British policeman who ran the UN police operation in Bosnia until
1999, said : “There were truly dreadful things going on by UN police officers
from a number of countries. I found it incredible that I had to set up an
internal affairs department to investigate complaints that officers were having
sex with minors and prostitutes.”
The tribunal was
told that a senior UN official, Dennis Laducer, was caught in one of the most
notorious brothels. Mr Laducer, Deputy Commissioner of the International Police
Task Force, was investigated by UN human rights officers and is no longer with
the mission.
The ruling
yesterday will cause further embarrassment to the UN over the behaviour of its
peacekeepers. In March investigators disclosed that the British aid workers and
the UN contingent in Sierra Leone were demanding sex from teenage refugees in
exchange for food and money. The UN’s refugee agency, which carried out the
inquiry, told of a “shameful catalogue of sexual abuse.”
Ms Bolkovac, was
posted to Sarajevo in 1999 to investigate the traffic in young women from
Eastern Europe. “When I started collecting evidence from the victims of
sex-trafficking, it was clear that a number of UN officers were involved from
several countries, including quite a few from Britain,” she said,
“I was shocked
appalled and disgusted. They were supposed to be over there to help, but they
were committing crimes themselves. But when I told the supervisors they didn’t
want to know.”
Ms Bolkovac said
that she witnessed frightened young women given exotic dance costumes by club
owners, who told them they had to perform sex acts on customers, including UN
personnel, to pay for the outfits.
“The women who
refused were locked in rooms and outside contact was withheld for days or
weeks. After this time they were told to dance naked on table tops and sit with
clients, recommending the person buy a bottle of champagne for DM200, which
includes a room and ‘escort’. If the women still refuse to perform sex acts
with customers, they are beaten and raped in the rooms by the bar owners and
their associates. They are told if they go to the police they will be arrested
for prostitution and being illegal immigrant.”
[Our comments –
Little wonder that people are frightened to speak the truth today on various
crimes. We should now understand why Indian Historians do not speak truth about
Taj Mahal ]