December 2019
In the spirit of pluralism: ISEB officials visit neighboring Methodist Church to offer Christmas greetings
Fremont CA: Islamic Society of East Bay (ISEB) President Jamal Qureshi and Secretary Abdus Sattar Ghazali last night visited the neighboring St. Paul Methodist Church to offer Christmas greetings to the Pastor Rev. Johann Oasis. They gave a bouquet of flower and a box of chocolate to the Pastor Rev. Johann Oasis. Jamal Qureshi and Abdus Sattar Ghazali stayed for a while as the Christmas Eve service was going on. The ISEB community may not know or forgot how St. Paul Methodist Church became neighbor of the ISEB mosque. Read More
As India’s Hindu Supremacist Governament Moves to deprive 1.5 million Assamese Muslims of Citizenship, a Solidarity Network Emerges
By Anuradha Sen Mookerjee: The state of Assam in India is currently burning with violent protests against a new citizenship law passed by both houses of the Indian parliament in early December. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will ease the Indian citizenship process for undocumented migrants in India who come from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh – but only for those who are not Muslim, undermining the promise of equality by the Indian Constitution. The international community criticised the new law, with the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights calling it “fundamentally discriminatory”. Since its parliamentary approval on December 12, the law has triggered massive protests across India including in the capital Delhi. Read More
What you should know about India's 'anti-Muslim' citizenship law?
By Bilal Kuchay: New Delhi, India - India has passed a law that grants citizenship to religious minorities - except Muslims - from neighboring countries, with legal experts saying it violates the country's secular constitution. The new citizenship law, which was an amendment to a 1955 legislation, allows Indian citizenship to "persecuted" minorities - Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians - from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but makes no reference to Muslims. The legislation was pushed through India's Parliament by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and ratified by President Ram Nath Kovind on December 12. Read More
Check-book diplomacy over shadow’s Mini Islamic summit in Kuala Lumpur
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Saturday (Dec 21) confirmed what was reported by media earlier that Saudi Arabia pressured Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan to boycott the Kuala Lumpur mini Islamic summit called by Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammad from December 18 to 21. Interestingly, Pakistan was one of the first countries with which Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohammad shared his plans for holding the summit when he met Prime Minister Imran Khan along with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York in September last. Read More
The making of Hinducracy in Modi’s India
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui: BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party) landslide re-election victory under Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves no doubt that Hindutvadi divisive forces have grown steadily like a cancer in the body politic of India that is beyond cure. They have essentially nailed the coffin of Gandhi-Nehru-Azad’s ‘secular socialist’ India that many people admired, rather ignorantly. In practice, India has neither been secular nor socialist. It has always functioned as an upper-caste Hindu state. Interestingly, the BJP and its allies continue to call themselves democrats! But what the world sees under the saffron skirt of Hindu nationalism is the ugly and stinking face of fascism, fanaticism, communalism, racism and bigotry, and nothing to feel good about the direction India is heading to. Read More
Bangladesh alarmed at India’s Citizenship Amendment Act & National Register of Citizens
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said Sunday that the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens are India’s “internal issues”, but any uncertainty in Indian was likely to affect its neighboring countries. Momen cancelled his visit to India earlier this month after protests against the citizenship law erupted in india. His concern over the Citizenship Amendment Act came in the background of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks, during a debate on the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill at the Lok Sobha on December 9, that Hindus, a religious minority in Bangladesh, had “found it impossible” to undertake their religious activities in the country. Read More
Pakistan judiciary’s attempt to destabilize government of Imran Khan - Take Two
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: Within the last 24 hours, Pakistan judiciary has issued two verdicts against nation’s strong army. (Pakistan has sixth largest army in the world after China, India, U.S. Russia and North Korea.) On Tuesday (Dec 17) a special court hearing the high treason case against former president General Pervez Musharraf handed the retired General a death sentence for overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who had been sentenced in 2018 to ten years in prison for graft. On Monday (Dec 16), the Supreme Court of Pakistan issued the detailed verdict regarding the extension in tenure of Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Last month, the apex court had suspended the notification of Imran Khan’s government confirming the extension of General Bajwa for another three years after his term expires on November 29. Read More
A clear message to the Pakistani military
By Shamil Shams: A court has handed the death sentence to ex-ruler Pervez Musharraf. Although the capital punishment must be opposed, the verdict is a warning to the military that it must stay out of politics. Read More
Modi’s surgical strike on Muslims puts India at war with itself
By Debasish Roy Chowdhury: From Germany to Chile and South Africa, nations have had to endure painful reconciliation processes to heal themselves, put the past behind them and draw lessons from violent brushes with history to prevent their recurrence. India has chosen to beat a reverse path. Tired of the country’s stable democracy, preserved for seven decades after a blood-soaked independence, its muscular new caretakers are urgently poking old wounds in the hope of stirring up India’s demons to take it down the same road to perdition it long ago escaped. Amid opposition protests and marathon debates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) this week pushed through a bill in parliament that will give Indian citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The Citizenship Amendment Bill, or CAB, which became an act on Thursday with the president’s assent after it was cleared by both Houses of Parliament, allows for the first time in constitutionally secular India a citizenship provision based on religion. Read More
As rage spreads, time to ask what India voted for
By SAIKAT DATTA, NEW DELHI: As violence and rage spread across India over the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), it is time to ask what Indians voted for just seven months ago in the general elections. Indians gave a historic landslide victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was elected for a consecutive second term with a rare single-party majority. Such an electoral feat has not been seen in India since the 1970s. With 303 seats out of a 545-seat parliament, Modi and his party, the BJP, dominate India’s political landscape. Ideally, this should have led to political stability, economic progress and assure an international standing for India that it has long deserved. Read More
Expert Briefing at U.S. Congress: Genocide of Muslims a step away in Kashmir, Assam
Indian American Muslim Council: The world’s best-known expert on genocide has said Muslims in the Indian provinces of Kashmir and Assam are just one step away from extermination. “Preparation for a genocide is definitely under way in India,” Dr. Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch said at a Briefing at the U.S. Congress on Wednesday. The persecution of Muslims in Assam and Kashmir “is the stage just before genocide”, Dr. Stanton told an audience of Congressional and Government officials. “The next stage is extermination — that’s what we call a genocide.” Read More
Suu Kyi – the Bama Supremacist
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui: An extraordinary event took place on Thursday (December 12, 2019) in The Hague, the Netherlands. An International Court of Justice (ICJ)panel wound up the first phase of a legal process aimed at determining whether Myanmar committed an act of genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority.It is the first step toward justice for the Rohingya people: our world’s longest-suffering and most persecuted people.In August 2017, under the pretext ofcounterterrorism operation, the Buddhist-dominated Myanmar military launched a genocidal campaign that killed tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims and drove nearly a million of them into the neighboring Bangladesh. Read More
To promote peace in South Asia: Ibaadatkhana movement launched in SF Bay Area
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: Ibaadatkahna, a non-partisan movement, was launched on December 8, 2019 at a unity dinner held at the Chandni Restaurant, Newark CA. The Unity dinner participants passed a resolution saying “the Ibadatkhana movement is a response to the dark clouds of religious polarization and oppression of minorities in the Indian subcontinent that has amplified in recent years and threatens the very core secular fabric of the region and may engulf the entire region.” Read More See more pictures watch videos on You Tube
The CAB is a trap by BJP to divide and rule India
By M Burhanuddin Qasmi: The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 (CAB) is a trap set by the Bhartya Janta Party (BJP) to "Divide and Rule" India. The Bill is by all means against the interests of India. It is communally biased and clearly against the spirit of Indian’s secular democratic Constitution. The Preamble of India’s Constitution unequivocally laid down the foundation of our Nation which is secular and equal for all citizens. Read More
Stopping genocide Rohingya
By Habib Siddiqui: As far as the Rohingya genocide is concerned, the role of Julius Streicher, the evil genius part, has long been performed by such guys like Aye Chan (who teaches in Japan), Aye Kyaw (who died few years ago; taught at New York University as a US naturalized citizen) and Khin Maung Soe (Saw) - who lives in Germany. Read More
Saudi Air Force trainee opens fire at Naval Air Station in Florida killing 3 people
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: A Saudi national opened fire Friday (Dec. 6) on a classroom at the Naval Air Station Pensacola (Florida), killing three people before he was shot to death by sheriff’s deputies in the second fatal shooting at a U.S. military installation this week. U.S. and Saudi government officials identified the gunman as Ahmed Mohammed al-Shamrani, who had been receiving aviation training at the base, the Washington Post said adding: Investigators are also working to determine what, if anything, Shamrani's fellow students knew about his intentions. Read More
Israel-based group is behind bigoted Facebook smear campaign aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar
By Eoin Higgins: “The goal of these anti-Muslim hate campaigns is clear—they put Muslim lives here and around the world at risk and undermine our country’s commitment to religious pluralism.” Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress, have been the target of a sustained campaign of far right hate and lies originating from a shadowy Israeli group, according to an investigation published Thursday by The Guardian. Read More
Ex-Infowars Staffer: We Made Up Shariah Law Threat Stories
By Jamie Ross: A former staff member at Alex Jones’s far-right conspiracy site Infowars has admitted to making up stories for Jones about the threat of Shariah law within the U.S. Writing for The New York Times, Josh Owens expressed his regret for helping Jones spread Islamophobic misinformation. Read More
At NATO, Trump irrelevant as France’s Macron Confronts Turkey on Invasion of Syrian Kurds
Juan Cole: Ann Arbor– The 70th anniversary of NATO was commemorated with a low-key meeting rather than a summit and was not the united show of success hoped for by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, reports Al Jazeera. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan made waves. And a CBC camera crew caught some NATO leaders, including Canada’s Justin Trudeau and the UK’s Boris Johnson having a laugh about the pretzels in which Trump’s unpredictability ties his staff. Read More
AMU professor removed from directorship for criticizing Ayodhya verdict
By American Muslim Perspective: Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) professor and prominent Islamic scholar Dr Rashid Shaz has said that he has been removed from the directorship of the Centre for Promotion of Educational and Cultural Advancement of Muslims of India (CPECEAM), as a punishment for delivering a critical speech on the Ayodhya verdict. According to an office memo, dated November 21, the vice chancellor ordered replacement of Dr Shaz with Dr Naseem Ahmed Khan with “immediate effect”. Read More
NRC and Citizenship Amendment another step towards fulfilling the RSS agenda of Hindutva
By Shahul Hameed Mattumannil: If the proposed Citizenship amendment bill 2019 is passed, it would be a landmark achievement to RSS, in virtually legitimizing one of its core ideologies- citizenship based on religion or ethnicity. A national NRC coupled with citizenship amendment bill sends the message that all citizens, except Muslims, who fail to produce required documents, would be presumed as persecuted refugees eligible for citizenship. This is the most effective way of realizing the Sanhgh’s ideology of making Muslims as second class citizens. Read More
The Decline of Arab World: Leaders Who Could Not Lead
by Dr Mahboob A Khawaja: Once the Arabs were leaders in knowledge, creativity, science and human manifestation, progress and future-making – the Islamic civilization lasting for eight hundred years in Al-Andalucía- Spain. But when they replaced Islam – the power and core value of their advancements with petro-dollars transitory economic prosperity, they failed to think intelligently and fell in disgrace and lost what was gained over the centuries. They relied on Western mythologies of change and materialistic development which resulted in their self-geared anarchy, corruption, military defeats and disconnected authoritarianism. The Western strategists ran planned scams of economic prosperity to destroy the Arab culture with their own oil and their own money turning them into redundant beings for the 21st century world. Today, the Arab leaders are so irrational and cruel that they reject all voices of REASON for Change and Human Development only to bring more deaths and destruction to their societies. Read More
Arab Leaders Count Dead Bodies but Peacemaking is not the Aim
By Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja: The Arab world is fast becoming a landscape of extended graveyards; missing is a sense of humanity and futuristic impulse. Do the oil producing leaders of transitory economic prosperity really care for the catastrophic present and what future will unleash on them? Subsequent to the 9/11, the Arab world in particular and the Muslim people in general have been the victims of a planned new age of confrontation and exploitation. Read More
Lockdown in Kashmir Continues
By Syed Rifaquat Ali: It is now four months and the situation is status quo by and large in Kashmir. The least Mr.Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, can do is to send his representatives to Kashmir to see the ground realities in order to save thousands of people from physical and mental torture. Read More
Trump Is Dismantling the International Order
By Dr. James J. Zogby: The Trump Administration’s declaration that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian lands are not illegal was, in fact, a consequential act – though not for the reasons cited by Israelis or Palestinians. It was also "the nail in the coffin" – though not the "coffin of the peace process"– as some Palestinians have claimed. Read More
The Sino-India Tug-O-War
By Haider Abbas: There are quite visible signs of Indo-China growing competitiveness (read chasm) around us, as after the Sino-India Doklam standoff (2017, Bhutan) which lasted 73 days there is another Doklam brewing-up now in Arunachal Pradesh (AP) as BJP MP Tapir Gao from AP East spilled the beans in parliament (November 19, available on Youtube) saying that if he would not raise the issue future generations of India would never forgive him. He informed that up to 50 to 60 kms of land in AP has been occupied by China and there is not even a whimper! If not a bang on it. Read More
Build Resistance not Walls: A Reader for a World Without Walls
Book Review by Jim Miles: A collection of essays concerning the boundaries being established by walls, Build Resistance not Walls centers its arguments on the walls of Palestine: the so called security fence that runs some 700 km through Palestinian lands of the West Bank, and the Gaza wall of various constructions that is about 60 km long. It goes far beyond these two physical manifestations of walls, taking the reader into global geographies and into global ideologies, strategies, and mindsets using walls to, essentially control global populations. It is in essence about the extension of the global frontiers of empire, an empire based on corporate capitalism that dehumanizes the majority of people and destroys environments, while extracting profits for the elites. The empire is based on Israeli-American desires of hegemonic control. Read More
China launches mandatory face scans for mobile users
AMP Report: A new rule requiring face scans of customers signing up for new mobile plans in China came into effect Sunday (December 1), with widespread adoption of facial-recognition technology across the country. In September last, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that “artificial intelligence and other technical methods” should be used to match the faces of customers buying new SIM cards with their identity documents. Read More
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
Your donation
is tax deductable.
