RUTHFULLY YOURS

As soon as the statue of “Lady Justice,” blindfolded and holding a scale, was erected in the Bangladeshi capital, fundamentalist groups began to protest, on the grounds that the piece of art was “un-Islamic” and constituted idol-worship.

Since 2013, dozens of people have been slaughtered, many with machetes. Although ISIS claimed responsibility for many of the brutal killings, no formal investigation into the murders was ever launched.

Instead, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took the opportunity to arrest more than 11,000 people, only 145 of whom were Islamist terrorists. The rest were charged with crimes such as theft and drug-dealing, indicating that it might have been part of Hasina’s crackdown on critics since her election in 2008.

The arrest on May 26 of 140 secular activists in Bangladesh is the latest in a string of incidents indicating a disturbing shift towards Islamic fundamentalism in the East Asian parliamentary democracy.

The activists were rounded up by police during a demonstration against the government’s removal of a statue outside the Supreme Court building in the capital city, Dhaka. They were charged not only with holding an illegal gathering and obstructing justice, but with the attempted murder of the law enforcement agents dispatched to quell the protest.

The statue was a depiction of “Lady Justice” — the Greek goddess Themis (and Roman Justitia), blindfolded and holding a scale — this one wearing a sari. As soon as the iconic, universal symbol of jurisprudence was erected last December in the Bangladeshi capital, fundamentalist groups began to protest, on the grounds that the piece of art was “un-Islamic” and constituted idol-worship.

The Supreme Court of Bangladesh, in Dhaka. (Image source: F2416/Wikimedia Commons)

Although secularism is enshrined in the constitution of Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been accused — with good reason — of accommodating Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamist lobby group comprised of madrassah educators and students, which has called for the enacting of blasphemy laws. The group’s leader, Allama Shafi, is infamous for demanding the death penalty for atheists and anyone defaming Islam. He is also known for referring to women in derogatory terms, while urging parents not to educate their daughters past the fourth or fifth grade.

In a meeting in early April with Shafi and other Islamic scholars and imams, Prime Minister Hasina not only succumbed to the demand that Lady Justice be taken down, but said that she herself had been unhappy about its placement outside the Supreme Court. Within a few weeks, the statue was being taken down — in the middle of the night.

The ensuing protest in the streets and on social media by Bangladeshis bent on maintaining their country’s separation between mosque and state turned out to be effective, however, in spite of the mass detention of demonstrators. On Sunday evening, the statue was returned, albeit a few hundred yards from its original location, in a place less visible to the public.

Shafi’s response was both swift and sharp. “Do not play with our religious beliefs, national spirit and heritage,” he said, aiming his anger at the government. “Do not push the country towards the curse of Allah through such anti-Islamic activities.”

That did not take long….Alan Dershowitz who has been clear on anti-Semitism, the Comey duplicity, and the UN returns to the tired and discredited and ahistorical drivel of the 2 State (dis)solution of Israel. There are two states for two people! One is Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, and the other is Jordan from the River to 92% of Palestine…rsk

Over the years, and to the current day, they continue to want no state for the Jewish people more than they want a state for Palestinian Arabs.

The general idea of a two-state solution – which Abbas has nominally supported – does not specify that one state would be for the Jewish people and the other one for the Arabs.

When the Palestinian leadership and people want their own state more than they want there not to be a state for the Jewish people, the goal of the 1947 U.N. Resolution – two states for two peoples – will be achieved. A good beginning would be for Abbas finally to agree with the U.N. Resolution and say the following words: “I accept the 1947 U.N. Resolution that calls for two states for two peoples.” It’s not too much to ask from a leader seeking to establish a Palestinian Muslim state.

There is a widespread but false belief that Mahmoud Abbas is finally prepared to accept the two-state solution proposed by the U.N. in November 1947 when it divided mandatory Palestine into two areas: one for the Jewish People; the other for the Arab People. The Jews of Palestine accepted the compromise division and declared a nation state for the Jewish people to be called by its historic name: Israel. The Arabs of Palestine, on the other hand, rejected the division and declared that they would never accept a state for the Jewish people and statehood for the Palestinian people. They wanted for there not to be a state for the Jewish people more than for there to be a state for their own people. Accordingly, they joined the surrounding Arab armies in trying to destroy Israel and drive its Jewish residents into the sea. They failed back then, but over the years, and to the current day, they continue to want no state for the Jewish people more than they want a state for Palestinian Arabs. That is why Abbas refuses to say that he would ever accept the U.N. principle of two states for two peoples. I know, because I have personally asked him on several occasions.

In a few months, Israel will be celebrating the 70th anniversary of the historic U.N. compromise, but the leaders of the Palestinian Authority still refuse to accept the principle of that resolution: two states for two peoples.

President Trump, for his part, has expressed an eagerness to make “the ultimate deal” between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This has propelled discussions about the dormant peace-process back into the spotlight. Shortly before travelling to the Middle East – where he met with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel and President Abbas in Bethlehem – Trump invited the Palestinian leader to the White House. Abbas was last at the White House in March 2014 shortly before the Obama administration’s shuttle diplomacy efforts –led by Secretary of State John Kerry – fell apart.

There’s Free Cheese in Every Mousetrap

Theresa May is tarred with having been the cause of the Conservative’s near-disastrous election result. Having been voted to lead her party less than a year ago, following a Brexit vote she opposed, everyone now seem to be blaming the debacle on her lack of judgement, wooden personality and absence of charisma.

Some blame her for going to the polls unnecessarily early. Yet it was not so long ago that this seemed a stroke of Machiavellian genius: she faced a Labour Party in open revolt against a leader whose crypto-communism and consorting with terrorists would surely doom his party to a crushing defeat and a decade in the wilderness. The early campaign seemed to confirm these prognostications. Labour fought on a platform that few in the mainstream media could support. The platform was a children’s wish list which included.

Lots of free stuff like electricity price caps, child care and higher education and no extra taxation except on that noxious 5 per cent super rich.
Interest free loans for homeowner property improvements
60 per cent zero carbon/ renewables by 2030 and a ban of fracking for gas.
Higher wages for teachers and child care workers
Nationalisation of water and energy networks; and
A £250 billion infrastructure fund.

During the campaign several of Jeremy Corbyn’s key personnel demonstrated a total lack of awareness of the policy – the hapless shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, was a vacuum of policy ignorance and a treasure trove of asinine quotes (“You can’t defend the indefensible – anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical”). Yet there was a huge swing to Labour and Ms Abbott increased her own majority by 11,000.

Theresa May is criticised for trying to slip in a few policies under which people would need to pay more of their own way (including for respite care). Those reproaching her for this may be correct, but only because they are part of the school which sees as inevitable a limitless ratcheting up of communal versus individual payments.

However, Mrs May also played the tooth fairy, with more spending on education, raising the lower thresholds for income tax, and a cap on energy prices (ironically, the Democratic Unionist Party was alone in not seeing the electricity supply industry as an overflowing tank of revenues with which to buy votes). The Conservatives had some vague notions of a balanced budget some time in the next decade; and they also had tougher immigration policies (they always do — and they always fail to implement them).

So, what does voters’ refusal to endorse Theresa May and their increased support for Labour (and in Northern Ireland the terrorist Sinn Féin party) tell us?

It would be encouraging to fall back on blaming the Conservatives’ poor campaigning and vigorous campaigning by Mr Corbyn. But the more plausible answer is that people voted for those who would provide them more of what they want. One part of this is the amplified government spending and regulatory gifting which has increasingly undermined fiscal policy over the past century. People’s wants, as economists often proclaim, are insatiable, and those wants being met without having to earn them are especially valuable. The mob will flock to politicians who give them things and it will care little about how these gifts came to be afforded – after all, the popular media is full of stories featuring rich people with fancy lifestyles, and there is an assumption that such affluence can be harvested for the gift-receivers without that reaping affecting the size of the magic pudding. In past centuries, revolts of taxpayers against the government acted as a check on its size, but the balance of power has now shifted to the recipients of taxpayers’ wealth.

Another part of the answer may be Mr Corbyn’s softer approach to terror and immigration. From afar this is difficult to comprehend, especially as the London bombings came part way through the campaign. But for many, appeasement is the preferred approach to combatting terror. Like LGBTQIwerty folk for Islam and the US counter-demonstrators who, only this weekend, outnumbered demonstrators against Sharia Law, many feel that if we are less aggressive against Islamic preferences and more understanding of the bombers’ perspective we will see an abatement of the harm they inflict. Supporting this are commentators blaming militant Islamic terror on the West for fighting what are depicted as proxy wars against Islam in Libya, Iraq and Israel. Appeasement is the first step toward capitulation, as painted in the France of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission.

Here is the dark magic of PC thinking: it subtly inverts the truth, leaving us feeling virtuous while literally and metaphorically disarmed. Hug the person next to you, urged Katy Perry at the Manchester memorial concert. Just hope he’s not wearing a suicide vest.

It is easy to be cynical about pop singer Katy Perry’s appeal during the June 4, 2017, One Love Manchester benefit concert for members of the audience to touch the person next to them and say, “I love you”. The all-star performance commemorated victims of the terrorist attack carried out after an Ariana Grande show at Manchester Arena on May 22, resulting in 22 deaths (many of the victims young girls) and 119 people injured. Given that only the day before One Love Manchester, Saturday June 3, another terrorist assault, this time in the vicinity of London Bridge, left eight people dead and 48 injured, the all-star concert assumed additional meaning.

Some with longer memories, of course, might have remembered all the way back March 22 when Islamic State sympathiser, Khalid Masood, drove a vehicle into pedestrians on the south side of Westminster Bridge and Bridge Street wounding 50 people, four of them fatally.

Some construed Perry’s plea as foolish, even delusional: “It’s not easy to always choose love, is it? It can be the most difficult thing to do. But love conquers fear and love conquers hate. And this love that you choose will give you strength, and it is out greatest power.”

I, too, was ready to dismiss her “little exercise of love” as utterly facile, and yet she is halfway to the truth. “Love”, courtesy of our Judeo-Christian origins, really is one of the attributes of Western civilisation. That said, we need to add the caveat that love, in the sense of transcending the tribal and acquiring a universal quality, has a post-Christian flavour today. Still, something Christian remains in our increasingly post-Christian worldview. There are those who would contend that we have, by and large, eschewed the religious dimension of our traditional faith – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” – while maintaining the Golden Rule aspect: “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

katy perry

Unconditional love is in the air and I hope some young Muslims, in the United Kingdom, Australia or anywhere for that matter, were inspired by the good vibrations emanating from One Love Manchester and have elected to shun the homicidal tribalism of Sudden Jihadi Syndrome. We can hope.

Arab News reported (6/7/2017) that “Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the parliament building and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iranian capital. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility and released a video purporting to show gunmen inside the parliament.” The twin attacks on Wednesday killed 12 Iranians, and embarrassed the radical Islamist regime by showing its vulnerability at home. IS terrorists hit the most potent symbols of Iran’s Islamic Republic on Wednesday. It has brought into sharp focus the high cost of Tehran’s involvement in Syria, which according to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leadership, was meant to ward off terrorist attacks at the home front. With an economy that has barely recovered from sanctions imposed on it by the international community, the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can hardly justify the huge cost to the treasury of exporting its revolution and backing Assad in Syria with Iranian cash, if not in blood.

Given the Sunni-Shiite conflict engulfing the Middle East, it was inevitable that IS will ultimately strike at Iran – the patrons of Shiite-Islam. The antecedents of IS in Iraq proved that the Sunnis who ruled in Iraq albeit, as a minority with a Shiite majority, won’t easily allow Shiites to disenfranchise them. In Syria however, the Sunnis are the majority, and have been ruled for almost 50 years by the Alawite (Shiite) clan of the Assads. It was never a question of whether or if IS will strike at Iran but rather when. The array of Shiite militias fighting IS, and non-Islamist Sunni militias, under the command of Maj. General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Division of the IRGC, is clear enough reason why Iran is, and will continue to be a target.

To expand its influence throughout the Middle East region, and extend the Shiite Crescent, the Ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran has devoted huge resources to protect its turf in Syria, and maintain it as a bridge to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. In essence, it means the preservation of the Bashar Assad, Alawi-led (Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam) regime. The Syrian dictator who has now earned the moniker “the butcher of Damascus” can count on the Iranian ‘Foreign Legion’ made up of Shiite fighters from Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. They provide the manpower that serves the Iranian agenda in Syria. Besides Hezbollah, there is the Afghan “Fatimiyoun and Khadem el-‘Aqila Brigades; the Pakistani Zainebiyoun Brigade; Yemeni Houtis “Liwa Al-Saada Brigade, the Iraqi Shiite militia Al-Nujaba Movement. The Iraqi Shiite contingent is the largest force engaged in the defense of the Assad regime. It is estimated to number around 40,000 fighters.

According to the Qatari based outlet, Al-Jazeera (1/22/2016), “Some 20,000 Afghan Shia fighters alone are said to be fighting alongside Iran to help save the government of the Syrian President Assad.” Iran, the publication pointed out, recruited tens of thousands of Afghan Shiite fighters, offering them salaries to join the fight to save President Bashar Assad. The Afghan Shiites are refugees from the ongoing war in Afghanistan between the government of Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban. They escaped to Iran due to economic and political hardship, and sought asylum there. Given the inability of young Afghanis to find work in Iran, they are easily manipulated into being cannon-fodder for the Iranians. Unlike an Iranian fighter, an Afghan illegal migrant killed in action would not be a burden on the Iranian treasury. Moreover, its foreign mercenaries provide Iran with deniability with regards to their intervention in Syria.