May 2020
Attaining Piety during Ramadan
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui: This is the last week of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Through fasting from dawn to dusk a Muslim experiences hunger and thirst, which allows him or her to empathize with those in the world who have little to eat or drink every day, thus, teaching and encouraging him/her to be charitable. Through increased charity, Muslims develop feelings of generosity and good-will toward fellow human beings. As we witness the deaths of more than three hundred thousand people as a result of the deadly virus Covid-19 with millions of others being infected by it, it is high time to realize that life is too short to waste. There is no better time than now, today, this very moment to introspect and prepare for Taqwa.May Allah help us all to be of service to mankind. Read More
In a strategic move: Beijing to build Bhasha Dam as part of China-Pakistan-Economic-Corridor
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: In a strategic move, China has signed a staggering contract worth $5.8 billion for constructing Diamer-Bhasha Dam as part of $60 billion China-Pakistan-Economic-Corridor (CPEC). China on Friday, May 15, defended its decision to take up a mega-contract to build the dam in Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir. The Chinese authorities called it a part of a "mutually beneficial and win-win" bilateral cooperation with Pakistan. Read More
Pakistan Army seeks Iran's assistance in dealing with militants after six soldiers killed in Balochistan
By Abdus-Sattar Ghazali: Pakistan Army Chief of Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Monday sought Iran's cooperation in dealing with Baloch militants allegedly operating from its soil. General Bajwa called Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri against the backdrop of last Friday's attack on a Frontier Corps patrol in Balochistan's Kech district in which six troops, including Major Nadeem Bhatti, were killed. Read More
Commemorating the 163rd anniversary of 1857 War of Independence
by Shamsul Islam: Large sections of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs unitedly challenged the greatest imperialist power, Britain, during India’s First War of Independence which began on May 10, 1857; the day being Sunday. This extraordinary unity, naturally, unnerved the Firangees and made them realize that if their rule was to continue in India, it could happen only when Hindus and Muslims, the largest two religious communities were divided on communal lines. Urgent steps were taken to create enmity between these two. This was the reason, that immediately after crushing militarily this liberation war the then minister of Indian Affairs Lord Wood, sitting in London confessed: “we have maintained our power in India by playing off one part against the other and we must continue to do so. Do all we can, therefore, to prevent all having a common feeling.” Read More
India's elusive spy agency - The R&AW, An insight
By Robbie Rowling: India's Cabinet secretariat has a secret division known as the Research and Analysis wing which monitors worldwide threats and intelligence that matters to India. They comprise of officers from all walks of society besides IAS, IFS and RAS Government Officers who handle their respective agents. Read More
Muslim Minority in Contemporary India
by Bilal Ahmad Dar: Leaving aside the economic and educational position of Muslim minority in India, the question that needs address here is: Are Muslims safe and secure in contemporary India? The answer to this contentious question is: No! This can be verified by a chain of incidents and episodes that happened from time to time to them in the contemporary India. Read More
Politics of fearmongering in the altar of Hindutva in Modi's India
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui: On April 16 two Hindu ascetics and their driver were lynched to death near Gadchinchle village in Maharashtra’s Palghar district in India. As it always happens these days with Hindutvadi fascists running India, the blame for their deaths was put squarely upon the Muslims. Nothing should surprise us in a country that has become the den of hatred and intolerance of Muslims. Read More
Dr Zafar ul Islam Khan must be protected from all harassment and intimidation
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat: The chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission Dr Zafar ul Islam Khan face sedition charges for one of his tweets. I am not surprised these days how our police is behaving. While those who spread hatred, threat people openly and intimidate them through social media as well as ‘popular media’, screaming loudly on television channels have never been touched. Look at the events hate mongers on TV channels have got full protections by the government. If certain state governments have gone against some of those hate mongers, BJP leaders are defending them as if they are ‘champions’ of civil liberty and democratic rights. Of course, it is open secret how much BJP as well as Sangh Parivar ‘respect’ these rights of the individuals. Read More
India inching towards chaos
Syed Rifaquat Ali: Mehbooba Mufti, former Jammu & Kashmir chief minister, who has been in detention for about eight months, has been shifted from the government guest house in Chashma Shahi on Maulana Azad Road near Lal Chowk in Srinagar to her Fairview residence on GupkarRoad in Srinagar recently. But she is still in detention. Read More
COVID-19 and The New York Times as Ideological Gatekeeper
by Gary Olson: I’ve been negligent in failing to acknowledge my gratitude to op-ed writers at the New York Times for their frequent doses of insidious misinformation which demand disassembling and refutation. They didn’t disappoint on May 5, 2020. In the lead op-ed, “Will We Get Used to the Dying?” Editor-at-Large Charlie Warzal expresses his gut-wrenching feeling that Americans are already beginning to adapt to Covid-19’s deadly consequences. After informing readers that the Federal government has ordered an extra 100,000 body bags and that a reliable computer model projects 3,000 deaths per day in early June, Warzal suggests that most Americans are likely to “simply carry on with their lives” and finds parallels with the indifference now shown toward mass shootings across the country. Read More
It's Not a "Chinese Virus:" The Correct Name Is "The Capitalism Virus"
By Richard Eskow: COVID-19 reached New York primarily from Europe, not China. Italy was a center of the infection in Europe, and the deep business ties between Italy and China -- including the manufacture of designer bags and cheap clothing in Tuscany -- contributed to its devastating spread there. Read More
Debt Cancellation for the World to Survive: Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed
By Lawrence Freeman: Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has made an audacious salient call for debt cancellation for low income countries. It was published in the Opinion section of the April 30, New York Times, Why the Global Debt of Poor Nations Must Be Canceled, (printed in full below). PM Abiy is correct, debt cancellation is absolutely necessary to save lives and for developing nations to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. To compel a nation like Ethiopia to spend almost half of its revenue on debt service, while its people are suffering from a perfect storm of Desert Locust swarms, food insufficiency, and a weak healthcare infrastructure, is immoral if not criminal. Read More
The inevitable coronavirus censorship crisis is here
By Matt Taibbi: Earlier this week, Atlantic magazine – fast becoming the favored media outlet for self-styled intellectual elites of the Aspen Institute type – ran an in-depth article of the problems free speech poses to American society in the coronavirus era. In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong. Authored by a pair of law professors from Harvard and the University of Arizona, Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods, the piece argued that the American and Chinese approaches to monitoring the Internet were already not that dissimilar: Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices… But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable. Read More
Facebook censors accounts of Palestinian activists and journalists
Facebook on Monday evening removed dozens of accounts run by Palestinian activists and journalists without prior notice. Some accounts were deleted for no reason and other users were informed they “violated the site’s policies”. Sada Social Center on Tuesday said it had received dozens of reports from Palestinian Facebook users that their accounts were arbitrarily deleted. Read More
The courage to call out India’s Hindu chauvinist persecution of Muslims
USCMO: The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) has issued the following statement on the persecution of 200 million Muslims in India: In the midst of so bleak and bloody a period of anti-Muslim oppression and disenfranchisement underway in India today, with the sanction of its blatantly Hindu chauvinist government and their unleashing of cadres of zealot youth goons, it is heartening to see officials and human rights groups – in both the Muslim Gulf countries and the U.S. – publicly document and decry India’s heinous, calculated politically propagated savagery against Muslims. Read More
Can we put a brake on rampant Islamophobia in India?
by Ram Puniyani: Islamophobia as a word came more into vogue after 9/11 2001 twin tower attack. In the aftermath the American media popularised the word “Islamic Terrorism” and for the first time in global history a religion was given association with the political act of terrorism. In India the Hate against minorities had already been prevalent, but with different arguments. It was by-product of the communal politics, which came up during freedom movement as a reaction to Indian nationalism. Hindu communal politics propagated Islam as a religion associated with violence, it was propagated that it spread through force, it indulges in terrorism, Muslim kings destroyed Hindu temples, Muslims indulge in polygamy, produce more children, are more aggressive, eating beef etc. All this was already the part of ‘social common sense’ here. Read More
Noted Lawyer Kapil Sibal Mocks at Modi Government over Coronavirus Pandemic
Syed Rifaquat Ali: The Indian prime minister Narendra Modi abruptly announced on March 24 a 21-day total lockdown to contain Coronavirus, which spread like a wild fire from Wuhan city in China. And the lockdown, which was to end on May 3, has been extended for another two weeks. Modi's overnight announcement without any consultation with the Opposition leaders, or for that matter with the States, caused unprecedented worries for 1.3 billion people, half of which live in the slums. Veteran Congress leader and noted lawyer, Kapil Sibal, launched a scathing attack on the BJP government for mishandling the pandemic disease, causing untold miseries to the common man. Read More
100 years after San Remo and the denial of Arab rights continues
By Dr. James J. Zogby: It was appropriate that during the week in which we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, Israelis and Americans were discussing the Israeli government’s declared intention to annex large portions of occupied Palestinian lands. As was the case at San Remo, the arguments made and the language used by the parties to this discussion were deeply upsetting, demonstrating no respect for the victims of their designs – the Palestinian Arab people.One of the purposes of San Remo was to ratify the British and French claims to divide up the Arab East – which they saw as the spoils of World War I. Read More
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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