politico--2019-01-16--New House Science chair seeks more oversight of NASA projects

The new chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee says upcoming oversight hearings will "be a little more in-depth" on major NASA programs like plans to construct a lunar outpost orbiting the moon.  "We intend to have the subcommittees function, which will give us time to be more in-depth in our questions and getting answers than I think we’ve had in the past few years," Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson tells POLITICO. "Our subcommittees have just had cursory hearings and that’s been it. We want to be a little more in-depth to get more information and make sound recommendations."  The Texas Democrat also said she wants the committee to hear from more rank and file officials at NASA to get a better picture of of agency operations.  "We've got to get beyond just the leadership," she explains. "There are a lot of hidden figures at NASA [and] researchers who are very involved."  But finding colleagues to join the oversight committee has been a tough slog, she complains. Incoming lawmakers seem more concerned with fund raising so tend to seek slots on committees that better position them to raise money for their re-election campaigns.  "There’s so much emphasis on raising money here that everybody picks committees [where] they think they can raise money easily," explains Johnson, who first arrived in 1993 and whose district is centered around Dallas. "The scientific community is not a big fund raising area. You can’t expect scientists to have as much money as an oil person. But they probably have more to offer in terms of the future and how we can be prepared for it. But that’s not the way this institution functions, which is very unfortunate."  Johnson also spoke about her hopes for NASA’s fiscal 2020 budget request and future cooperation in space with with Russia and China.  "The space research has been one of the most successful bodies of research we ever had," she says. "I would hate to see a curtailment of that research after so much investment."  This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.  What would you like to see in NASA’s fiscal 2020 budget request?  We’d like to see all the research funded as well as we can. We recognize that we can have all kind of pie in the sky but the money isn’t available, so we hope to be very attentive and also very sensible through our subcommittee research...to come up with what we consider a very sound and responsible budget. What that has to do with what’s coming out of the executive branch, I don’t know. Because the executive branch sent over their budget that has no relationship to much of what we’ve researched and would recommend. We have worked very closely with the Senate committees and tried to come up with some reasonable. It has never matched what this executive branch said.  We have got to determine what our commitments really are to these programs...Almost any large research program, if you’re going to be consistent, it’s going to cost money. What comes out of it obviously is many times going to be a lot more than you ever put in it, but you have to put in first. The space research has been one of the most successful bodies of research we ever had...Whether we can afford it and whether we are committed enough to continue to do more of the research and take advantage of what we’ve already invested, that’s yet to be determined. I would hate to see a curtailment of that research after so much investment.  How do you get your colleagues on board with that?  There’s so many people even here [in Congress] that do not understand why we are messing around in space without realizing how many modalities, how many products this activity has brought. I don’t know what the new class understands about it. But we also have to go through that process of making sure that we all…[understand] why we’re here and what we’re trying to determine based on what we expect to get in return.  This committee is the door to the future, because without research you don’t have a future. It’s very difficult for that to be really understood sometimes. When you have a freshmen class of this size coming in and 95 percent of them want to be on [other committees, like] Ways and Means, Appropriations and Energy and Commerce, it doesn’t [show me] that they understand what the future really is about. We’ve got to go through that. This is a new beginning. All the people who have scientific backgrounds, I’ve sent them a letter of invitation to consider asking for the committee. It would be very nice to have someone with a background in research or science of some sort join the committee.  Any sense of how many new members might be interested in joining the committee?  I’ve had two or three approach me expressing interest, but not more than that...There’s so much emphasis on raising money here that everybody picks committees [where] they think they can raise money easily. The scientific community is not a big fund raising area. It is an essential knowledge base area that I thoroughly enjoy, but that’s not the focus here. The focus here is how much money you can bring in. You get promotions, you get assignments all based on how much money you raise. They come here knowing that, so that’s their focus...Of course, you can’t expect scientists to have as much money as an oil person. But they probably have more to offer in terms of the future and how we can be prepared for it. But that’s not the way this institution functions, which is very unfortunate.  What topics do you plan to focus on as chairwoman?  We have not organized yet...There are a lot of questions that are up in the air that we have not decided on related to the International Space Station...We will be looking at all of that...We’ve invested a lot in that space station, we don’t know yet how a phase out will come [or] whether we turn it over to another country. I’m certainly not settled in my mind that it ought to be phased out any time soon.  Do you have any concerns about the Space Launch System?  I have been impressed with NASA’s defense of their activities...The ability to ask questions that we still have in our minds on this side of the aisle will help to see if we can get to any information we feel we’ve not gotten...I don’t know that we could have done any more as the minority, but we will continue to be vigilant and ask questions.  I don’t know if we’ve had enough hearings or enough input from the scientists involved to make a definitive decision on that, but I think we will. That area remains an area in which we have great interest. We intend to have the subcommittees function, which will give us time to be more in-depth in our questions and getting answers than I think we’ve had in the past few years. Our subcommittees have just had cursory hearings and that’s been it. We want to be a little more in-depth to get more information and make sound recommendations.  How can NASA change its culture to better take advantage of commercial capabilities?  I’m not so sure how much NASA has had to do with decisions in the direction of privatization...I’ll have to explore that and just see what the basic attitude is. There are a lot of hidden figures in NASA that we have not heard from...I’m not so certain that I have the full picture of anything other than Orion and a few of the individual projects.  I think it’s going to be important for us to have a really good view of what some of the thinking might be and to try to see how we can plan a future collaboration with other countries of which we’re working with. It’s been more difficult for me to grasp it all with materials going up on the commercial vehicle and they’re going up on another country. We see the actual researchers now and then. Hopefully we can have better insight as to what the activities really are and I think so many of the researchers, we never have contact with.  So you would like to hear from lower-level officials at NASA?  We got to get beyond just the leadership. There are a lot of hidden figures at NASA [and] researchers who are very involved.  How should the U.S. adapt to China’s growing space capabilities?  I do think we need to be in a little bit more collaboration…[if for no other reason] than to find out what...they’re doing.  Can NASA adequately do that given current restrictions under the Wolf amendment?  It’s very difficult, because we don’t do this in isolation. When you look at the other items in question with China, with trade and all that, I’m just not sure whether it’s an environment for us to get the appropriate scientific information. All of that we’ll have to explore. It would be easy if we could separate this program away from the overall China picture.


aljazeera--2019-04-05--Islamic banking in Ethiopia offers Muslims financial inclusion

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - It's afternoon in Addis Ababa's bustling Bole Michael district, and businesswoman Hukun Aden Mohammed is doing a brisk trade.  The 45-year-old, single mother of seven opened her modest cosmetics and snack shop in the heavily ethnic Somali neighbourhood two years ago.  Business is so good, she's planning to grow and diversify.  "I plan to expand my business by opening up a shoe store," Mohammed told Al Jazeera.  "Inshallah (God willing) I also plan to open businesses in my home city, Jijiga in Somali regional state and across other parts of Ethiopia."  Ten years ago, Mohammad, an observant Muslim, would have struggled to find funding that aligned with her religious beliefs.  But Ethiopia's measured embrace of Islamic banking is offering her and other entrepreneurial-minded Muslims a gateway to financial inclusion.  She started her business with a loan from the Somali Microfinance Institution (SMFI), Ethiopia's first provider of sharia-compliant microfinance services.  "I first received around 7,000 Ethiopian bir ($246) loan from SMFI and with my business successfully expanding, I have recently received a loan of around 75,000 Ethiopian Birr ($2,645)," said Mohammed.  Unlike conventional finance, sharia-compliant financial institutions do not charge interest on loans. Instead, they share in any potential profits or losses of the businesses they underwrite.  They also refrain from lending to businesses that engage in or promote activities prohibited under Islamic law, such as gambling, or selling pork or alcohol, or selling services that promote "immorality."  The vast majority of SMFI's loans are structured as resale agreements known as Murabaha, where the bank purchases goods for its client and then sells the goods back to them at a slightly higher price than the original cost. The customer can then repay the loan in instalments.  For Mohammad, Islamic banking services have transformed her financial life.  "The loans from Somali Microfinance Institution have already allowed me to support the needs of my children, pay for my accommodation and business rent," she said. "With future loans from SMFI, I plan to buy house or land to expand my business and build a stable home for me and my family."  While financial inclusion has improved in Ethiopia, it still lags behind the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.  The percentage of adults in Ethiopia with a bank account increased from 22 percent in 2014, to 35 percent in 2017, according to the World Bank Global Findex database.  In Kenya, by contrast, 82 percent of adults had a bank account in 2017.  Part of that gap can be attributed to mobile money uptake, which is far greater in Kenya than Ethiopia.  While the drivers of that difference are not fully understood, Islamic banking is helping to boost financial inclusion in Ethiopia by reaching communities which formerly felt excluded from the country's banking sector.  Though roughly a third of Ethiopia's estimated 105 million citizens are believed to be Muslim, formal directives on Islamic law-compliant finance were only issued by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) in 2011 - the same year SMFI opened its doors.  SMFI has since served around 30,000 customers, mostly in rural communities in Ethiopia's eastern Somali region. Islamic law-compliant microfinance institutions have also sprung up in Ethiopia's Afar region.  SMFI hopes to evolve from a microfinance institution into a fully-fledged Islamic bank - a hurdle no Ethiopian financial institution has cleared yet.  "Regardless of whether we become a fully-fledged sharia-compliant bank in the future, we plan to expand our services to other parts of Ethiopia serving interested customers, Muslims and non-Muslims alike," Ubah Hassan, senior saving and credit officer at SMI, told Al Jazeera.  While most big banks in the country have a window where customers can access Islamic financial services, a dearth of expertise in Islamic law-compliant banking has hampered past attempts to form an Islamic bank.  The proposed Islamic bank Zamzam stalled in 2012 when it failed to satisfy NBE directives on interest-free banking issued the year before.  "We didn't have experienced personnel in Ethiopia on sharia-based banking services and products in Ethiopia previously," Solomon Desta of NBE told Al Jazeera. "That's why we initially opted to start with interest-free window banking services."  Abdillahi Farah, financial inclusion adviser at Mercy Corps Ethiopia which helped launch SMFI, said Islamic law-compliant windows in big banks do not go far enough for some customers.  "Sharia-compliant MFIs have attracted customers who have felt banks don't represent them even though they have window-based interest banking system as some suspect it's a compromised banking practice," he told Al Jazeera.  But Ethiopia may be inching closer to green-lighting an Islamic bank.  Efforts to create a more hospitable climate for Islamic banks have been renewed since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Christian whose father is Muslim, came to power in April 2018.  And many see greenlighting Islamic banks as part of a greater liberalisation drive to attract more foreign investment, including the NBE, which is preparing a study to assess the impact of allowing fully Islamic law-compliant financial institutions.  "Ethiopia is looking on how to comprehensively liberalise the financial sector," said Desta. "Ethiopia is geographically close to Middle Eastern countries that have lots of money which can be easily mobilised to invest in the country."


aljazeera--2019-05-20--Breaking the silence Report documents torture in Kashmir

'Breaking the silence': Report documents torture in Kashmir

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir - Prisoners in Indian-administered Kashmir have been subjected to abuse and torture, including "water-boarding, sleep deprivation and sexualised torture", according to a report by two rights bodies.  The 560-page report released on Monday mentions solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and sexualised torture including rape and sodomy, used as torture techniques against Kashmiris.  Other torture methods included electrocution, hanging from a ceiling, dunking detainees' head in water (which is sometimes mixed with chili powder), said the report by Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) and Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS).  During the torture detainees were stripped naked, beaten with wooden sticks, and bodies were burned with iron rods, heaters or cigarette butts, it said.  "Muzaffer Ahmed Mirza from Tral and Manzoor Ahmad Naikoo were subjected to insertion of a rod through their rectum. It caused multiple ruptures to their internal organs," reads one of the 432 testimonies documented in the report.  "While Mirza died after a few days in the hospital of lung rupture, Naikoo had to undergo five surgeries to finally heal the wounds he received due to this torture.  "Apart from insertion, a cloth was wrapped around Naikoo's penis and set on fire."  Titled, "Torture - Indian state's instrument of control in Indian-state of Jammu and Kashmir", it said that more than 70 percent of the torture victims were civilians.  India has stationed more than half a million security forces in the disputed Muslim-majority region to quash an armed rebellion against its rule. Indian forces have faced criticism for excessive use of force, with the UN human rights body last year calling for an international probe into rights violations.  The UN Human Rights Chief had also called for establishing a Commission of Inquiry (COI) to conduct a comprehensive independent international investigation into allegations of human rights violations in Kashmir.  A COI is one of the UN's highest-level probes, generally reserved for major crises like the conflict in Syria.  Rights bodies have called for repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a law that gives forces immunity from prosecution.  The report, which documents cases since the start of the armed rebellion in 1990s, reveals many detainees were put under behavioural coercion where they were forced into activities that were against their "religious beliefs" like rubbing piglets on their bodies or forcing them to consume alcohol.  In some cases, it said, rats were put inside victims' trousers after soaking sugar water on their legs.  "The prisoners are forced to eat or drink filthy and harmful substances like human excreta, chili powder, dirt, gravel, chili powder mixed water, petrol, urine, and dirty water," it said.  The report reveals most of the civilian victims were usually reluctant to report the atrocities due to the fear of reprisals at the hands of security forces.  "Victims have been randomly picked up, tortured and never even told what they were tortured for," it said.  In a prologue of the report, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E Mendez, said the report "will be enormously helpful in drawing attention in the international community to the need to express concern about India's human rights record".  Parvez Imroz, the human rights lawyer and the president of JKCCS, told Al Jazeera that "torture is one of the massive human rights violations going on unabated in the region from last many decades".  "This report is an effort to break the silence around this heinous crime," he said.  The Director General of Police, Jammu and Kashmir state, Dilbagh Singh, rejected the torture claims.  "There are no such cases, if there have been any allegations, there are magisterial inquiries and other investigations. If they have any such case, they must tell us and we would respond to them".  Vijay Kumar, the advisor to the governor of the restive region, said that he would comment after reading the report.  The report said that more than half of the 432 victims suffered some form of health complications after being tortured.  "In the 432 cases studied for this report, 24 are women. Out of these 12 had been raped by Indian armed personnel," the report says.  The torture survivors have battled with psychological issues long after their physical wounds were healed.  "Of the 432 victims, 44 suffered from some form of psychological difficulty after being subjected to torture," it said.  A study published in 2015 by Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials MSF) said that 19 percent of the population in the region suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Although India has been a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT) since 1997, it has not ratified the treaty to date. In all three UPRs conducted by the UNHRC in 2008, 2012 and 2017, it was recommended that India ratify the convention.  In 2010, Prevention of Torture Bill was introduced in the Indian parliament but was not passed and it lapsed in 2014.  Khurram Parvez, who is also one of the researchers for the report said that "the report is a challenge to state-imposed erasure of history and memory".


aljazeera--2019-05-29--US activist goes on trial for helping migrants on southern border

An Arizona activist charged with harbouring two undocumented migrants faces trial on Wednesday in a case likely to set a precedent over what aid US citizens can give to undocumented migrants.  United States Border Patrol agents arrested Scott Warren in a January 2018 raid near Ajo, Arizona after they found two migrants hiding in the shower of a ramshackle building used by humanitarian groups.  The 36-year old faces two felony counts of harbouring the undocumented migrants and one felony count of conspiracy to transport the two men. The university geography instructor could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of all charges.  Warren was indicted after former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed prosecutors to prioritise cases involving the harbouring of migrants. The crackdown was part of President Donald Trump's "zero-tolerance" policies at the border.  Warren is a volunteer for No More Deaths, a faith-based group providing water, food and medical aid to migrants in the harsh deserts of southern Arizona.  More than 3,000 undocumented migrants have died since 2001 trying to cross the area where temperatures can exceed 115 Fahrenheit (46 Celsius), according to Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner data.  Warren was arrested the same day No More Deaths published a video showing US Border Patrol agents destroying water supplies the group left for migrants.  Warren's lawyers argue the arrest was in retaliation for the video. They say he was lawfully exercising his religious beliefs and rights to help the migrants after they spent two days crossing the desert.  His parents have collected over 128,000 signatures calling on the US Attorney's Office in Tucson to drop all charges.  "This is an overreach of federal authority," said Juanita Molina, executive director of Tucson-based human rights group Border Action Network.  "Humanitarian aid is vital to the survival of migrants crossing the desert," she added.  US Border Patrol referred questions to the US Attorney's Office. It did not respond to a request for comment.  Prosecutors are expected to argue Warren went beyond humanitarian aid.  Jury selection for the trial in US District Court, Tucson, begins on Wednesday morning, and opening statement are expected later in the day.


aljazeera--2019-06-27--Protests in Indian cities after Muslim man beaten to death

New Delhi, India - Protests were held in various parts of India on Wednesday following the lynching of a Muslim man, with people demanding an end to what they termed as "lynch terror".  Tabrez Ansari, 24, was beaten to death by a Hindu mob in Kharsawan district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand on suspicion of theft, causing a public uproar.  Protests were planned in about 50 cities under the hashtag #JusticeForTabrez and #IndiaAgainstLynchTerror. It was not clear how many cities participated in it.  In the Indian capital, New Delhi, scores of people, including university students and activists, held a protest at Jantar Mantar close to the parliament house.  Holding placards and chanting slogans against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the protesters demanded an end to the violence against Muslims.  "Violence against Muslims has to stop," said one of the speakers at the protest site. "Government must understand that we will not tolerate this lynch terror any more," he added.  Mobile phone videos, which went viral on social media, shows Ansari tied to a lamppost and beaten by a mob before police intervened and took him into the custody.  He was forced to shout "Jai Shri Ram" (Hail Lord Ram), a slogan increasingly used by Hindu far-right groups. In the footage, Ansari is seen crying and pleading for mercy while being beaten with sticks and forced to repeat the chants.  Police took Ansari to hospital for treatment but four days after the June 18 incident. He was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at a local hospital.  Police have arrested at least 11 villagers over the grisly attack and two officers have been suspended from duty.  "It is a very scary situation for Muslims," Sana Maryam, a protester, told Al Jazeera. She alleged that the perpetrators of the violence have enjoyed impunity.  Another protester named Fatima, a university student, said: "We the people of India have been living in peace and harmony since very long and we have not been hostile to each other but after the BJP government came to power things have changed."  "Efforts are being made to divide people in the name of religion so that they fight each other and the real issues are not talked about."  The public anger prompted Prime Minister Modi to make a comment in parliament, saying he was "pained" by the incident and called for "the strictest possible punishment to the accused".  However, he said that it was unfair on part of people to call the state of Jharkhand, also ruled by the BJP, "a hub of lynching".  "The lynching in Jharkhand has pained me. It has saddened others too. But some people in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian parliament) are calling Jharkhand a hub of lynching. Is this fair? Why are they insulting a state? None of us has the right to insult the state of Jharkhand," Modi said.  Kavita Krishnan, the secretary of NGO All India Progressive Women's Association, said: "People from the Muslim community are being continuously targeted."  "In almost every case of lynching, barring one or two, people have been arrested but never prosecuted or convicted," she said.  Hate crimes against minorities, particularly Muslims, have increased in the South Asian nation since Modi's Hindu nationalist party came to power about five years ago.  Dozens of Muslims have been attacked or lynched by Hindu mobs since 2014, in many cases over suspicion of cow slaughter which is banned in most Indian states, as Hindus consider the cow a sacred animal.  According to data from the website Factchecker.in, which has been monitoring hate crimes in India, this is the 11th instance of hate crime this year.  Last year, the Supreme Court condemned "horrendous acts" of mob violence and asked the government to enact a new law to deal with an increase in incidents of lynching.  In all the cases of hate crimes since 2009, the data indicates that in 59 percent cases the victims were Muslims and 28 percent of the incidents were related to alleged cattle theft or slaughter.  In its annual report - International Religious Freedom for 2019, released last week - US State Department said religious intolerance in India is growing under Modi's right-wing government.  The report said: "There were reports of religiously motivated killings, assaults, riots, discrimination, vandalism, and actions restricting the right of individuals to practice their religious beliefs."  "Authorities often failed to prosecute perpetrators of 'cow vigilante' attacks, which included killings, mob violence, and intimidation," it added.  New Delhi rejected the report, saying a foreign government had no right to pronounce on the state of Indian citizens' constitutionally protected rights.  Ansari's wife Shaishta Ansari told NDTV news channel that her husband was beaten so brutally because he was a Muslim. "My husband was my only support. Who will I live for now? I want justice."  Activists say that "it's an emergency situation" and the Indian government must act.  "India must realise that this is not an emergency for the Indian Muslims only but for India's democracy as well," said Apoorvanand, an activist and professor of Hindi at Delhi University.


aljazeera--2019-07-05--Repression stalks Chinas Uighurs 10 years after Urumqi riots

Repression stalks China's Uighurs, 10 years after Urumqi riots

Ethnic minority Uighurs in China's far western region of Xinjiang are living through an era of unprecedented surveillance and detention that has done little to address inter-ethnic tension a decade after riots in the city of Urumqi, which left nearly 200 people dead.  Last week, Xinjiang's vice chairman Aierken Tuniyazi told the UN Human Rights Council there had been no "terrorist" attacks in the region in three years.  But experts say the absence of visible violence belies the continuing repression of minority culture and inequality between the Han Chinese majority and the Muslim Uighurs.  "There's a lack of trust," said Reza Hasmath, a professor at the University of Alberta who has studied ethnic relations in Xinjiang.  Tough policies such as the re-education camps "are going to suppress any potential violence," he told AFP.  "But it still creates a generation of distrust with Han people among Uighurs" Xinjiang, home to most of China's Uighurs, has suffered repeated episodes of inter-ethnic violence.  But the riots that broke out in Urumqi, the regional capital, on July 5, 2009, were a seminal event.  Hundreds if not thousands of rioters smashed shops, burned vehicles and attacked people after two Uighur migrant workers were killed in a factory brawl in southern China.  The riots revealed "very ugly scenes" of distrust, said Joanne Smith Finley, an expert on Uighur-Han relations at Newcastle University, describing reports of Han Chinese doctors refusing to treat Uighur patients and vice versa.  In the years since she said divisions between the two groups have only "magnified" with members of both ethnic groups fleeing mixed neighbourhoods.  "It's still very strained," Smith-Finley added, recounting Uighur-Han interactions she observed on a work trip last year. "It's all pretence on the surface."  In recent years, Xinjiang authorities have clamped down on public displays of religion and rounded up an estimated one million mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking minorities into internment camps in the name of "counterterrorism".  China describes the facilities as "vocational education centres" where "trainees" learn Mandarin and job skills.  Tuniyazi told the rights council the centres have "scored remarkable achievements" as trainees have "broken away from the spiritual control of terrorism and extremism".  But former inmates have said they were jailed for merely following their Islamic traditions.  A Kazakh businessman, who spent nearly two months in a camp, told AFP the facilities only had one goal: to strip detainees of their religious belief.  Inmates were forced to sing patriotic songs every morning and eat pork, a violation against Islam's religious restrictions, he said.  Dozens of mosques and religious sites around Xinjiang have also been demolished or stripped of their domes since 2017, according to satellite images.  Observers say racial profiling is prevalent, with Han Chinese often waved through police checkpoints while Uighurs are stopped.  "The Han Chinese in the region more or less are given special treatment, and don't have to undergo the type of scrutiny in terms of checks that Uighurs do," said Timothy Grose, a China ethnic policy expert at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.  "I think this will certainly add to the discontent between the two groups," he said.  Along with the security clampdown, Xinjiang authorities have been actively pushing Uighurs to assimilate.  According to a 2018 document from the central government, Xinjiang is popularising the use of Mandarin at schools.  The aim is to ensure "ethnic minority students can master and use the national language" by 2020.  The local government is also trying to encourage inter-ethnic marriage. National census data from 2010 shows only 0.2 percent of Uighurs were married to Han people.  In May, the Xinjiang government published new rules to reward students of mixed descent by increasing the number of bonus points they receive on the nationwide college entrance exams while reducing marks for those whose parents are from the ethnic minority.  Meanwhile, waves of mass migration from China's heartland have raised Xinjiang's Han population from six percent in 1949 to 37 percent in 2015, according to the most recent official figures.  The growing influx of Hans could exacerbate ethnic tensions, said Hasmath, who cites 2002 and 2012 census data in a paper on socioeconomic inequality between the two groups.  If Han people get the best jobs and tend towards hiring others within their group, "minorities are pushed out of the best jobs and the best wages," he added.


aljazeera--2019-08-01--Dutch ban on burqas and niqabs takes effect

The Netherlands has banned face-covering clothing, such as a burqa or niqab, in public buildings and on transport, as a contentious law on the garment worn by some Muslim women came into force.  Between 100 and 400 women are estimated to wear a burqa or niqab in the European country of 17 million people.  "From now on the wearing of clothing which covers the face is banned in educational facilities, public institutions and buildings, as well as hospitals and public transport," the Dutch interior ministry said in a statement on Thursday.  The legislation - which was passed in June last year after more than a decade of political debate on the subject - also applies to other face coverings such as full-face helmets or balaclavas.  Security officials are now required to tell people with face-covering clothing to show their faces. If they refuse, they can be denied access to public buildings and fined 150 euros ($165).  However, it is unclear how strenuously the law can be enforced, with the public transport sector saying it would not stop to make a woman in a burqa get off as it would cause delays. Hospitals also said they would still treat people regardless of what they were wearing.  Both groups said enforcement of the law was up to the police.  Muslim and rights groups have voiced opposition to the law - formally called the "partial ban on face-covering clothing".  The Nida party, an Islamic political party in Rotterdam, has said it will pay the fine for anybody caught breaking the ban and has opened an account where people can deposit money.  Nourdin el-Ouali, leader of the Nida party, said the prohibition has far-reaching consequences as it poses a "serious violation" for freedom of religion and freedom of movement.  "They will not be allowed to go on a metro, bus or tram when the law is observed. They can't go to a hospital, they can't go to the schoolyard, they can't report to a police station," he was quoted as saying by the Hart van Nederland news website.  "For the 17 million Dutch people, the question is - what kind of problem are we actually solving here?" el-Ouali asked, noting only a few hundred women wore the niqab or burqa in the Netherlands.  "It is a minimal part. It is often women who, when you speak to them, indicate that they [wear the niqab, burqa] from their religious belief."  El-Ouali said he feared people would feel like they could take the law into their own hands when they saw someone wearing a niqab or burqa.  "That they'll think, 'I'm well within my rights when I put someone like that straight to the ground and call the police'," he said.  On Wednesday, an editorial in the conservative newspaper Algemeen Dagblad sparked outrage after it published an explainer on what to do if someone was spotted wearing the prohibited clothing. The tips included making citizen arrests.  There were no immediate reports on Thursday morning of anybody being fined under the new law.  Anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, who proposed the face-covering veil ban in 2005, welcomed the introduction of the limited ban as an "historic day" and called for it to be expanded to include Islamic headscarves.  "I believe we should now try to take it to the next step," Wilders told The Associated Press news agency in a telephone interview.  "The next step to make it sure that the headscarf could be banned in the Netherlands as well."  The Dutch government has insisted that its partial ban doesn't target any religion and that people are free to dress how they want.  The Dutch law does not ban the wearing of a burqa on the street, unlike France's ban which took effect in 2010. Belgium, Denmark and Austria have similar laws.


aljazeera--2019-08-24--I want people to see me as a wrestler not just some hijab girl

'I want people to see me as a wrestler, not just some hijab girl'

At 19, Nor "Phoenix" Diana has only been performing for three years but has already made a significant impact in the world of professional wrestling.  The first woman to wrestle in a hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women, she captured her maiden championship in Malaysia Pro Wrestling and has recently performed in the Philippines.  "I have a goal to wrestle in WWE," she told Al Jazeera, referring to World Wrestling Entertainment. "I think I can bring something to the wrestling industry. I want people to see me as a wrestler, and not just as some Muslim hijab girl.  "I started watching wrestling when I was 14 with my father and little brother as they were fans. I eventually became a fan too, and started thinking, 'Hey, I want to do that one day,'."  When she finished high school in 2016, she started searching for a place to get her in-ring training under way.  She enrolled in a wrestling school in the Kampung Baru, a Malay enclave in central Kuala Lumpur.  But not everyone at home was comfortable with her ambitions.  "My dad has always been supportive, but my mum doesn't really support me. I'm her youngest daughter," she said. "She knows wrestling has a high risk, and is afraid that I'll get injured easily."  Despite her concerns, Nor's mother didn't stand in the way.  Nor's coaches were so impressed with her acrobatic style that she debuted in the ring two months after starting her training.  Initially, reluctant to wrestle in the standard hijab, Nor, five feet tall and weighing less than 50kg, wore a mask to accommodate her religious beliefs.  She made the switch in 2018.  "When I started I was always worried that I don't belong in wrestling as I wear a hijab. I was worried what people would say about a Muslim girl wrestling. But I always trained in my scarf, and I started feeling more comfortable and confident, and decided to wear it to the ring. My bosses were really supportive of my decision."  Some people on social media have criticised her, saying Muslim women should not be involved in rough sports.  But on the whole, her choice hasn't hindered her progress.  That's not surprising to Malaysian sports commentator Abu Bakar Atan, who said that, within the Malaysian context at least, a woman wrestling in a hijab is not something out of the ordinary.  "It is not uncommon in Malaysia, where a number of female athletes wearing hijab have had a lot of success locally and internationally. For example, Aifa Azman is the British Open junior squash champion, while Siti Rahmah Mohamed Nasir is a multi-time silat martial arts world champion.  "The number of female athletes wearing the hijab is notable in Malaysia these days as they practice their religious belief without much issue. It's not a social taboo."  Nor hopes her example will encourage more girls to take up wrestling and other sports.  Malaysian wrestling fan Eli, a 27-year-old who also wears hijab, said Nor is an already inspiration.  "She is so young and she is already a champion. That inspires me to follow my dreams, and follow my passion," she told Al Jazeera. "It's not just me. What she is doing helps women's empowerment and helps veiled women in Malaysia to strive for their goals."  In the US market, female players in the mainstream wrestling scene compete in lavish and often revealing ring gear.  However rather than this being an issue, Nor's look will help her stand out, said Ring Magazine reporter Ryan Songalia.  "The worst thing that could happen to a wrestler is to be forgettable," he said. "There was probably a time when her look might have been a hurdle, but I think that time has passed.  "Major companies like WWE have a more diverse roster than ever before. And the business has gone global in a way that opens many new markets, so it'd be an asset to a US-based company looking to tap into those new audiences."  In 2017, Shadia Bseiso, a Jordanian, became the first Arab woman to sign with WWE.  Nor has already received support from within the WWE locker room.  WWE Superstar Ali, an American of South Asian heritage whose real name is Adeel Alam, told Al Jazeera that he was "beyond impressed" with Nor and believes she has a bright future.  "She's breaking down barriers. She's inspiring athletes across the globe that a hijab doesn't limit or define them. She's 'normalising' the hijab,  something many people don't understand. I can totally see her making it to WWE," he said. "Can you imagine the influence she would have on a global stage like that? I'm rooting for her, I really am."  Back in Kuala Lumpur, Nor knows she still has some way to go before making it to the elite level.  In the meantime, she remains focussed on refining her skills and raising the profile of pro-wrestling in Southeast Asia.  But if she continues on her current trajectory, it's difficult to see anyone stopping the Phoenix from rising.


aljazeera--2019-09-05--Teachers Day Why does Google celebrate it today

Teachers' Day: Why does Google celebrate it today?

Google has marked Teacher's Day in India with a Doodle or logo showcasing an animated red octopus, conducting a class.  Teacher's Day is being celebrated on Thursday across India in the memory of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a philosopher, and India's second president who was born on September 5, 1888.  As an academic, philosopher and statesman, Radhakrishnan is recognised by many as one of the most influential Indian thinkers of the 20th century.  President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended their congratulations to teachers around the country.  "On Teacher's Day, I pay homage to Dr Radhakrishnan and extend greetings to all our teachers," President Kovind wrote on Twitter.  Radhakrishnan was born on September 5, in Tirutania, southeast India, into a Brahmin family, the highest Hindu caste, in an area where Hinduism was a strong social force.  By the age of eight, he was sent to a German missionary school, where he started to focus on his native religion.  "I became familiar not only with the teaching of the New Testament but with the criticism leveled by Christian missionaries of Hindu beliefs and practices," Radhakrishnan wrote in a short autobiography.  In 1904, he entered Madras Christian College, and before beginning his MA degree in 1906, his interest seems to have been placed in law.  Radhakrishnan later recalled: "The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it... I prepared a thesis on the Ethics of the Vedanta (the earliest sacred literature of India), which was intended to be a reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics."  The success of his thesis led to his first academic appointment at Madras Presidency College in present-day Tamil Nadu state.  At Presidency College, Radhakrishnan lectured on a variety of topics in psychology as well as in philosophy.  From 1921, Radhakrishnan held the chair of philosophy at Calcutta University. It was the first time he was out of his native place, and he was geographically, culturally and linguistically isolated.  However, this isolation allowed him to work during his early years in Calcutta, now renamed as Kolkata, on his two volumes of "Indian Philosophy".  This was the first systematic approach to the subject, and one that opened the doors for Indian philosophy to be included as a formal study in universities throughout the world.  Radhakrishnan was knighted in 1931 and years later he became the first Indian to hold a chair at Oxford University.  During these years he expressed his vision of an autonomous country. Radhakrishnan envisioned a country that was guided by those who were educated.  The years following India's independence from Britain mark Radhakrishnan's increasing involvement in Indian political affairs.  Towards the end of the 1940s, he headed India's delegation to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation and became the chairman of the organisation in 1949.  Radhakrishnan also served as a member of the Indian Constituent Assembly helping to draft the first constitution.  Later in 1949, then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed him the ambassador to Moscow, a post he held until 1952.  His tenure was known for his conversations with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. On one occasion, by his own account, he asked the Soviet leader: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?," according to a report by the New York Times.  He became the country's vice president in 1952.  Later, his religious beliefs changed, and he gradually came to believe that all religions shared a basic unity.  In 1961, speaking at Harvard Divinity School of Harvard University, Radhakrishnan said: "It is one of the major tragedies of the world that the great religions, instead of uniting mankind in mutual understanding and goodwill, divide mankind by their dogmatic claims and prejudices."  Eastern and Western religions, he declared, can share with each other as "two sides of the same mold".  He became India's second president in 1972. After his retirement, he moved to his birthplace. Radhakrishnan died in 1975.  Radhakrishnan was awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honour in the country, in 1954. He was also nominated five times for the Nobel Prize for literature, and 11 times for the Nobel Peace Prize.


aljazeera--2019-09-08--Animal slaughter ruling in Belgium stirs religious freedom debate

Brussels and Wallonia, Belgium - Inside his Brussels office, animal rights activist Michel Vandenbosch opens a large book he wrote about the Global Action in the Interest of Animals, or GAIA, Belgium's leading animal rights organisation.  Vandenbosch, its president, points to photos of a 2014 rally in Belgium's capital, attended by thousands of people calling for a national ban on slaughtering animals such as cattle, sheep and goats without stunning them first.  "When you cut an animal's throat, without stunning, it still feels pain," said Vandenbosch.  GAIA produced a video showing animals contorting after a knife cuts the blood vessels in the neck.  "If you take the scientific evidence really seriously, then these kinds of habits should change."  On September 1, Vandenbosch and fellow supporters of the ban claimed a victory when the second such law went into effect in Brussels.  It first went into effect in Flanders - the northern, mostly Dutch-speaking region - in January. Now, the law must be respected in the southern, mostly French-speaking region, called Wallonia. Flanders and Wallonia are Belgium's two largest regions.  Back in 2017, Wallonia's parliament voted nearly unanimously in favour of the ban - just three members abstained.  Only Brussels, Belgium's third region, has not imposed the ban.  Belgium has three animal welfare ministers for each of its regions - Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia.  Some claim the bans are discriminatory, but Vandenbosch rejects framing them as a target on Muslims or Jews.  "It does not apply only to members of religious communities," he said. "It does apply to each and every single Belgian citizen period, whatever his religious beliefs may be."  He explains his organisation took on the cause around 1995, when Belgium's far right began pushing for a religious slaughter ban.  Activists like him feared that the far right had tinged the issue with Islamophobia.  "This would have meant a taboo on the whole issue," he said, so GAIA focused it on animal wellbeing.  But many Muslims and Jews in Belgium say they are outraged because, according to their religious laws, animals must be in perfect health before slaughter.  To them, the options for stunning - making animals unconscious - mean harming an animal before slaughter, which is forbidden.  They say cutting the throat causes the least amount of pain for animals.  A number of Muslim and Jewish groups filed a petition with Belgium's Constitutional Court against the Flemish law. The ruling would also affect the new Wallonia law.  Belgium's Constitutional Court has asked the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg a "question prejudicielle" - a prejudicial question, to help it make the decision whether the ban needs to change, whether it can be upheld or if it needs to be struck down.  The European Court is expected to answer between this autumn and the early new year, and then the decision returns to the Belgian court to make.  The Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations is among the groups that filed the petition.  Its president, Yohan Benizri, says when politicians make decisions on religious laws, they trample on the separation between church and state.  The bans infringe on religious freedom, he adds, and are undemocratic.  "The politicians are not there to define what is permitted and not permitted under religious law," Benizri said. "When minorities say this really affects us, I think people should listen."  The European Union has made stunning obligatory since 1979, but member states may make religion-based exemptions.  Other EU countries that have passed slaughter bans include Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Slovenia. Only Belgium's ban has led to a challenge all the way to an EU court.  "This is one of the first cases of a conflict between what I would call modernity on the one hand and religious freedom on the other," said Caroline Sagesser of the Centre de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Politiques, or CRISP, in Brussels.  "Now the European Union will have to take a stand and on an issue that the European Union does not like to decide upon," Sagesser added. "Generally speaking the Union has always let the member states decide for themselves on everything that covers relationship between church and state public funding and so on."  In the meantime, shops like El Halal, located in Charleroi, a city in Wallonia, have had to comply as of September 1.  They will likely provide imported meat from nearby EU countries, says employee Halim Aissani.  "It's not about the Belgian label," Aissani said. "It's about quality and for sure other countries have quality meat."  Instead, the problem, as he sees it, is how many Muslims now feel in their own country.  "We think we are a part of Belgium people, we feel Belgian, and these kinds of things show us that we are not accepted by the Belgian community," Aissani said.  Other halal meat consumers worry about a jump in prices.  At El Halal, where Aissani works, restaurant owner Abdelhak Ouelbani waited for his order of salami and ground beef.  A warm, red light glowed above, from a neon sign bearing the store's name.  "It will get a lot more expensive for us," Ouelbani said. "It will be hard to come and buy meat that's halal. I don't understand why before it was allowed and now it's not. Years pass and things change, and then it's always the people who pay."  Back in Brussels, Mustapha Chairi, a cofounder and president of Collective Against Islamophobia in Belgium, said generally, Muslims can find common ground with GAIA, but not on these bans, which he said "restrict the fundamental rights of citizens".  Still, Chairi sees one silver lining: maybe the ban will lead Muslims to eat less meat, he added.  "And with this kind of approach you influence the action on climate change," Chairi said, in reference to how meat production adds to global warming.  Experts predict in the coming years, similar conflicts will arise.  Sagesser, the researcher at CRISP, described conflicts "between religious norms and some principles which have become important in modern society.  "I think circumcision, for instance, is another issue where you may see this conflict between principle of protecting the child on the one hand and respect for religious freedom on the other."


aljazeera--2019-09-24--When is this going to endaTM Indonesians shrouded in toxic haze

'When is this going to end?â€™: Indonesians shrouded in toxic haze

Jambi, Indonesia – In an emergency clinic in the south of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, three-year-old Rafael has a cough and a fever.  The boy’s oxygen levels are so low he can barely raise his head from the gurney.  All he can do is lie still and wait for oxygen; his mother waiting anxiously at his side.  Parts of Indonesia have been ablaze since July as plantation owners burn land that is no longer considered productive to prepare it for replanting in the coming season or to turn jungle into plantation, sending plumes of choking smoke into the air.  The islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan have been the worst affected by what’s known as the haze, but is really a toxic smog made up of microscopic particles, including soot and tar, and chemicals such as cyanide and carbon monoxide.  With the fires still raging the cloud of pollution spread across Malaysia and Singapore this month, affecting millions more people.  In Jambi, Rafael’s mother Yuli tried to keep her son safe from the smog, but as he struggled to breathe, she rushed him to the clinic, one of 20 emergency response units set up for those affected by the pollution.  “I keep all the doors and windows closed and keep my two children locked up in the house,” she told Al Jazeera.  “I’m not brave enough to let them go outside. I’m so worried and I just hope it ends soon. I feel so sorry for the children.”  The city’s mayor, Syarif Fasha, closed schools on Friday and has ordered a review of the situation in the coming week.  “We monitor the air quality every 30 minutes and as soon as it hits unhealthy levels, I take action,” he told Al Jazeera. “If it keeps getting worse I will recall all teachers from schools as well as civil servants.”  Over the last 48 hours the air quality index peaked at 656, which is classified as "hazardous".     Fasha has ordered 100,000 masks to be distributed across the city and every local health clinic in Jambi is required to have an operating “recovery room” for patients suffering from respiratory problems caused by the haze. The rooms are sealed and equipped with oxygen, air-conditioning units and an exhaust fan.  One such clinic is headed by Dr Tety who told Al Jazeera that she had seen a spike in patients seeking treatment for acute respiratory infections in recent days.  “If patients come in with respiratory complaints, we take them straight to the emergency room and give them a nebulizer and oxygen. Then they go to the ‘recovery room’ for ‘cooling down’ where they are given more oxygen until their breathing returns to normal,” she said.  Dr Tety said the treatment was free for patients suffering from haze-related medical conditions, on the orders of the mayor of Jambi City.  Many of the patients are children, including six-year-old daughter Marwa who has a cough, fever and runny nose.  “I’m worried about my children’s health,” her mother Nurhasana told Al Jazeera.  “They like doing their daily activities outside, but for the past few days, I’ve kept them in isolation in the house. We only go out now if we really need to.”  But while the response in town has been praised, people living closer to the fire hotspots, say they feel abandoned by their local authorities.  In the village of Catur Rahayu, about an hour away from Jambi City, Siti Sunarsi can do nothing but sit in her home and hope for things to improve. Her daughter, five-year-old Nabilla, has been off school for one and a half months, and Sunarsi says she’s worried about her education as well as the health effects of the haze.  “She’s already forgotten everything she learnt, and the smoke is getting worse and darker every day. We keep asking ourselves: ‘When is this going to end?’” she said.  Pointing to the thick orange glow in the air, Sunarsi added that the smoke pollution was taking a huge psychological and physical toll on the local population.  “Everything is upside down. It doesn’t feel like day any more, it always feels like sunset. People who are usually healthy are sick. We have to have the lights on all the time, and we’re weak and feverish from the fires.”  Asked if she had considered leaving the area and moving her children to a place where the air quality was better, Sunarsi pointed out that there were few options for local residents, as the haze had blanketed all of Jambi Province.  “Even if we could leave, where is there to go?” she said.  Last week, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visited Riau Province - another haze hotspot in Sumatra - and said that the Indonesian government had deployed some 6,000 troops across Indonesia to put out the fires.  “We have made every effort,” he told the media.  Back in Jambi City, its beleaguered mayor said that the city had received only two helicopters to drop water bombs on the fires, compared with seven in other provinces such as Riau, and that more resources and personnel were needed to tackle the choking haze.  Until then, he said he was doing all he can to keep his community safe.  “I’ve instructed all residents of Jambi to pray for rain to extinguish the fires, in accordance with their individual religious beliefs,” he said. “When nothing else is working, it’s our last resort.”


aljazeera--2019-11-22--US Supreme Court to hear Trump appeal in 'no-fly list' suit

The United States Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a bid by President Donald Trump's administration to shield FBI agents from a lawsuit by three American Muslim men who said they were placed on the government's "no-fly list" for refusing to become informants.  The justices will take up the administration's appeal of a lower court ruling allowing the men, all US citizens or permanent residents who were born abroad, to sue under a 1993 federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. • US arrests counterterrorism analyst over leaks to journalists  The law was aimed at ensuring that the government had compelling reasons to substantially burden any person's exercise of religion. At issue is a part of the law that provides for "appropriate relief against a government", without defining what type of relief may be appropriate.  The Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 ruled that New York City residents Muhammad Tanvir and Jameel Algibhah and Connecticut resident Naveed Shinwari could pursue their lawsuit. They are seeking monetary damages, saying they were put on the no-fly list despite no evidence showing they threatened airline or passenger safety.  The men, whose separate encounters with the FBI spanned from 2007 to 2012, said they refused to spy on Muslim communities as requested by the FBI at least in part because of their religious beliefs.  Their inclusion on the no-fly list meant they could not visit family in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, sometimes for years. They said they were stigmatised by other community members and lost employment.  Tanvir, for instance, said he had to quit a job as a long-haul trucker requiring him to fly home after completing a route. Algibhah said he could not take a job in Florida because of his travel restrictions.    The government has told the men there is "no reason" why any of the three cannot take flights, indicating that they do not remain on the no-fly list.  A trial judge had thrown out the claims, but the appeals court revived the case, ruling that the law allows individual federal officers to be sued for damages.  In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said that the 2nd Circuit ruling, if allowed to stand, would clear the way for a slew of lawsuits against countless federal employees including national security officials, criminal investigators and correctional officers, which could deter them from performing their duties.


aljazeera--2019-12-29--Israel, UAE and the hypocritical manipulation of religion

On December 21, right-wing British magazine The Spectator published an article by Ed Husain, a controversial figure on the British Muslim scene, entitled Islam's reformation: an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East.       Husain, a self-styled champion of "Islamic renaissance" who describes himself as a former Muslim extremist is seen by some as an ally of Islamophobia.      His article puts forward a bizarre narrative: That a burgeoning alliance between a handful of authoritarian Arab leaders, including Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and the UAE's Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is a sign of "religious glasnost" in the Muslim world.      It was tweeted almost immediately after its publication by the Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed.  It is not surprising that the UAE's leadership gave its stamp of approval to the article. Husain, after all, has close links to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is a close friend and supporter of the UAE's rulers and their allies.  Husain's CV includes the title of former adviser to Blair, and a stint at the Blair Faith Foundation, whose stated goal was to counter religious extremism. This same foundation was mentioned in a proposal made by Blair to the UAE in 2016 for a $35m contract to "build its brand and reputation, and to establish powerful networks of influence".      In his pitch to the Gulf state, Blair, who recently offered his services to Egypt's military ruler, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, bragged about his and his foundation's connections in more than 50 countries. Over the last couple of years, Blair has been defending himself against claims of impropriety over the direct and indirect consultancy payments he allegedly received from the UAE and Saudi Arabia for services rendered.  Husain's article peddles some of the questionable theories we have previously seen Blair promote. These include blaming the hostility Israel faces in the Middle East and beyond on Arab and Muslim "extremism" and "anti-semitism" and claiming that Arabs should become more "tolerant" in order to end the conflict. Also, the claim that conflicts involving Muslims, from the Philippines to the Caucasus, and from Palestine to Mali, are all linked, and again the fault of Muslims, and their "intolerant" religious doctrines.  At one point, Saudi-promoted Wahhabism was advertised as the main culprit. This is, of course, too simplistic, since the bulk of the conflicts Muslims are involved in today are not religious but political and exist outside Wahhabism's zone of influence. Husain himself had become an extremist without ever coming in touch with Wahhabism - the ideology of the group he joined, Hizbut-Tahrir, is anathema to Salafi Wahabism.  The irony is that the proponents of these views now appear to believe, as demonstrated in Husain's article, that the Saudis hold the key to religious enlightenment in the Muslim world, and "reformist" MBS's Saudi Arabia can bring peace to the Middle East by forming an alliance with fellow "peace-lover" Netanyahu's Israel.  Even from an Israeli perspective, the Netanyahu government is not an advertisement for religious enlightenment, tolerance or peace. Secular Israelis are feeling under siege in the face of the hegemony of religious bigotry, fascistic tendencies and the ever-increasing aggression and self-entitlement of illegal settlers. It is even worse for Israel's beleaguered Arab citizens, or the Ethiopian Jewish minority, let alone the Palestinians living under occupation.  It may be a coincidence that the International Criminal Court announced an imminent investigation into Israeli war crimes just the day before this article came out, but it was another blow to any misguided hopes that Netanyahu's Israel should be the source of inspiration for anyone in this region, let alone religious reformers.  The coincidental highlighting of the UAE's own dismal human rights record did not help either. The day after bin Zayed's tweet, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a damning report documenting systematic and brutal harassment of the relatives of Emirati dissidents. Dozens of relatives of jailed or exiled peaceful opposition figures are currently banned from travel, cannot renew identity documents, or have restricted access to jobs or higher education. Tolerance, it appears, does not start at home.  The chorus of international condemnations that greeted the announcement this week of sentences against those convicted of murdering Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi did not help either. It was another unwelcome reminder of the credentials of another key ally in this coalition for so-called "Islamic reformation".  Spin and self-promotion do not qualify as reform or renaissance, and its promotors lack authority.  This a reminder that the Arab-Israeli conflict has nothing to do with religion, any more than the current intra-Arab struggles. The main actors in the conflict, both Israeli and Arab, have been, and still are, predominantly secular rulers and groups. In both the Arab and Israeli camps, the leaders of the initial struggle, whether from the Israeli Labour party, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation or leaders like Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser and Syria's Hafiz al-Assad, were lukewarm towards religion. Islamist actors and Jewish religious extremists entered the fray much later, in the 1980s.  Palestinians and other Arabs are not interested in the promotion of "religious tolerance" by highly intolerant regimes, but in a halt to the campaigns of dispossession and oppression.  No one knows or cares what Netanyahu's religious beliefs are and how different they may be from those of Arab leaders. It is what is being done on the ground (harassment, dispossession, killings, etc) that is causing conflict.  For peace with Israel to happen, the war and the colonial appropriation of land first has to stop. For the UAE and its allies, the human rights abuses and foreign adventures must cease. The hypocritical manipulation of religion will not lead to peace and tolerance. Quite the reverse, it will drive continuing conflicts and resentment within the Muslim Arab community.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.


News Briefs – 01/04/2018

I always see lots of r/K related stories I think might interest the readers here, but I only have time to blog about a few, so here are some additional news stories that might be of interest. You can skim the titles and summaries, and click the links if they are of interest.  Watched the JFK Jr show on ABC last night. The summary was that it was mostly a “look at the pretty people who died” piece. Three interesting parts to me. One, his magazine was better than other magazines, had a better schtick and publicity with big stars on the cover dressed as George Washington, had better promotion with him going on every talk show to promote it relentlessly, and yet it was failing. If a magazine that combined pretty people doing publicity-driving things, with issues oriented politics (and Ann Coulter), and JFK Jr promoting it everywhere on every talk show, could not make a profit, how does something lame like Newsweek, or similar turn a profit? Is it Michael Isakoff? I suspect similar Cabal outlets don’t turn a profit – they are funded by Cabal, and George was not. George may have been beginning to open John’s eyes to the reality, which is not like you are taught. Once you realize how you are living in a costly production designed to control what you think, it changes everything. You realize that what you think is worth the expenditure of a lot of money.  The second thing was all the female Kennedy’s killed in plane crashes, which they listed on the show. I am doing a blog on a Rothschild interview which was quite interesting. They seem to have a quasi-religious belief that the competition is not between individuals, but rather that at their elite level, bloodlines exist across time, almost as living entities, and it is bloodlines which are in competition, and which live or die. Thus if you kill one person in a bloodline in competition with your own, you will not win because it was their bloodline that made them competitive and a threat, and their relatives will eventually be a problem which might destroy your bloodline. Thus you must extinguish the bloodline, or subsume it. That is why royal bloodlines either warred, or intermarried, apparently. If they were killing female Kennedys who were not in politics, that would pass as a credible reason, under the belief system of a bloodline family. It also might explain why JFK Jr survived while he was single, and the drive to kill him would increase once he was married. Hillary’s Senate seat was probably the catalyst, but JFK Jr possibly having a son someday soon likely didn’t help.  The third thing was the bullshit about the crash. At the time he flew, a plane would have had four relevant instruments. A physical compass, an electronic compass/heading indicator, a banking/attitude indicator, and a GPS system. If he started to turn while in a cloud, his compasses would both have been turning too, as the plane did. The GPS screen, which would have had a straight lit-up line, with him at one end of the line at the center of the screen, and his destination airport at the other end of the line at the outer margin, would have been spinning like the hand of a clock, as his plane turned and his destination turned around the plane. and his bank/attitude indicator, run off a gyroscope, would have shown his wings banking. After one hour of flight time and familiarity with the instruments, if you were losing altitude, you could have looked at any one of those, and figured out what was going on. Second, even though the pilot they had on the show said he looked up at the clouds, and saw it look weirder than he had ever seen it, FAA was telling all pilots is was clear skies and perfect weather for Visual Flight Rules all night long. A pilot on the show said he kept calling that night, and that was FAA’s response. There is only one entity which can go to the FAA call center, flash something, and tell them what they will say when people call in about the flight conditions. It is not the FBI. Also, his instructor pilot, who he would normally have brought, was unavailable that night. Could be innocent, or could be arranged.  Finally, they claimed his plane was seen on radar suddenly plummeting straight down at “4700 feet per minute” into the ocean on the radar. Who calculates speed in feet per minute? Why would they do that on the show? Because although 4700 feet per minute sounds super fast, it is only 53 miles per hour. He was in a plane that flew at 160 mph when cruising. So his plane was probably doing 160mph, and on the radar it’s trajectory suddenly changed, and it headed down, hitting the ocean at 53 miles per hour. That does not sound like a powered plane pointing itself at the ocean and burning in under full throttle. It sounds like a mid-air explosion with the plane then crashing straight down at terminal gravitational velocity for falling debris. But nobody thinks critically today, so until Trump reveals it, don’t expect to see anyone else believe anything odd happened.  File under things you will not see on your local evening news show – Local Police inundated with calls from Targeted individuals who feel they are being assaulted with Space-Based weapons, after local council passed a resolution to try and ban such use of technology on their citizens. Interestingly, I cannot get the comments to load there.  Democrat Congresswoman, freshly sworn in, says to the crowd of Trump, “We’re going to impeach the Motherfucker!”  Sweden is amping up convictions of those who criticize mass migration 10 fold. So much for debating national policy.  Muslim Migrant doctor in Germany rapes four patients, gets a suspended sentence.  Man who won New Jersey Lottery twice is a gun-toting drug dealer. Or as Cabal would say, a ground-level sales associate with a history of helping in multiple special operations.  Evidence may be circulating that Brennan and Clapper hacked a FISA Judge as well as John Roberts, and Comey covered it up. This shit will all need to be outed soon, or by the time it is released it could be seen as old news.  Migrant remittances to Mexico and Central America rise to $53 billion per year.  Houston teen killed in “No lackin” challenge, where one teen pulls a gun and points it at someone, and they then have to prove they are not lacking a firearm by puling their own gun and pointing it back. Unfortunately, this teen squeezed off a round accidently.  An interesting article on a Lawyer suing the SPLC because he says they stole confidential documents to prove he represented a white nationalist group, so they could ruin him and get him fired from his job in the City of Baltimore. I find all of these things interesting in light of the idea that Cabal has a robust infiltration network all throughout the country at all levels, which it can use to police the ranks of positions of power in government. It is always possible this guy was judged a risk for some reason in his current position, and SPLC was just following orders of the Cabal to get him moved and neutered. I strongly suspect SPLC will be a big casualty of the Storm, and is comped entirely.  Financial blacklisting by Cabal financial services companies is increasingly being used to silence opposition to Cabal’s ultra-left-wing agenda.  Koch Network is going to push for Amnesty for Dreamers in 2019. Clearly they recognize small government conservatism will not be helped by that.  FBI documents show a plot was afoot to kill Occupy Wall Street leaders, if necessary. Not enough to know for certain what this was, but there should be no doubt there would have been a plan to kill any Occupy leaders who were not Cabal plants. I just doubt the real plan would ever have ended up in any FBI report.  Municipalities are making city services, like paying for parking spots, dependent on downloading the city’s App, probably so you can be tracked.  Religious dating apps must now make their services LGBT friendly.  Man arrested at Mara Lago trying to get to Trump to talk to him about “his $6.3 Trillion.” Are they sending in the MK Ultra windup toys?  Man moves security barrier and tries to get to Trump to give him 2 bottles of Crown Royale in return for advice on getting a wife. Given Trump did land Melania, this guy may not be as crazy as he seems. Though the fact Trump doesn’t drink should have factored into his calculations.  An article on how Snowball Earth erased a large section of the geological record through glacial erosion.  FBI is trying Amazon’s facial recognition software. I wonder if FBI does this in an environment where Amazon’s software could facilitate access to FBI’s video surveillance feeds by Cabal assets back in Amazon. Facial Recognition requires computing resources. Might FBI use Amazon’s computing resources to power the software, and thus run their video through Amazon systems? Might that video already be there on an Amazon Cloud account?  List of new gun laws for 2019. Be warned, a bump stock is now a $250,000 penalty and 10 years. That is just ridiculous.  Zuckerberg has stopped selling facebook stock as the value has plummeted.  State Department warns citizens visiting China that they may be detained using exit bans:  Hillary’s campaign ignored multiple offers of help from Silicon Valley to aid her in exploiting Social Media in 2016. This article feels like it indicates Hillary dropped the ball, but in reality, those accustomed to operating in an espionage-prone environment have to be doubly careful with those who show up offering to help. And just as nobody is as paranoid about being fucked over by friends and family as a narcissist, nobody will be as paranoid about being spied on as Hillary Clinton. Think about it, and you realize why she blocked them out.  Richard Shelby says shutdown could last for months and months. It seems Cabal needs Homeland Security funded so it can perform some service. I would assume every day DHS is not there, Cabal is blowing resources trying to replicate that function itself.  Navy SEAL will be Court Martialed for killing an ISIS fighter.  After a contentious election, Congolese are fleeing to Uganda, and there are fears Ebola may be following them.  Video of a diverse pack of feral youth attacking at a train station in Chicago.  Diverse pack of feral youth attack in New York.  Lesbian Batwoman is set to become a Social Justice superhero.  Russian living in North Carolina who defrauded Russian Government and tried to have his wife’s lover killed has a business tie to one of the Russians accused of election tampering. So somebody ripping Putin’s government off is also involved in a plot to make it look like Putin was interfering with our elections?  CIA mouthpiece WaPo announces Elizabeth Warren should not be supported in her run for President by any Cabal-member. I assume they want her to run to rile the feminists, but this is more to tell her to recognize what the final outcome needs to be, and stay in her lane in the final stretch.  Mitt Romney backtracks furiously after his op-ed attacking Trump falls flat. He is a psychopath, and this is how you control him. There is no principle, or willingness to traverse the difficult path. You only have to structure things so it is best for him to do what you want, and he will. Just it is best to structure them ahead of time.  According to Gallup, Pelosi only has 38% favorable rating, and 48% unfavorable. And that means even leftists are not able to bring themselves to approve of her, in what is probably a fake poll skewed to make her look good, because she is unlikable. Look at the brilliance of Trump not wasting effort on the House election. For the next two years, he will create very public fights with a woman who is highly unlikable, and many people will, subconsciously, view him as the enemy of an enemy. Excellent for 2020.  Paul Ryan left with only 12% approval. That is a measure of how Awake the Republicans are.  Whitaker reveals Huber is still investigating FBI surveillance of the Trump Campaign and Trump administration officials. This is directly ordered by Cabal. The question is, can the orders be tracked back up to where they were issued? I’d love to see who Huber’s neighbors are. There is no way Cabal has just gone hands off with him and his team.  This thread alleges that the Military Tribunals have already begun, Mattis and Kelly are handling the Military aspects, Rogers is handling the intel/classification aspect, and Sessions is doing the prosecuting. Mattis attacking Trump was strangely unprofessional for a consummate professional. And yet it allowed him to be slipped out of SecDef at exactly the right time, compared to when Trump’s EO went into effect.  Iran-allied militias will pull out of Kurdish region in Iraq. Iranian allies in another country agreeing to act reasonably in ways that benefit US allies elsewhere?  Trump says he has never had this much support, as he has gotten fighting for the border wall this past week. It is true, but you can see how that will alter the perceptions of the lemmings as well when he says it. Trump already has the logical support. The illogical is further out of reach, but in the middle are the lemmings. They hear this, and their minds open to the idea of the wall as something good, and they begin to move toward him. Trump is one in a trillion.  Trump is sending more troops to the border to string concertina wire. When the full story comes out, I suspect we will be blown away by what was actually going on at the border.


bbc--2019-01-07--Rahaf al-Qunun Saudi woman ends airport hotel standoff

Rahaf al-Qunun: Saudi woman ends airport hotel standoff

An 18-year-old Saudi woman who fled her family at the weekend has left Bangkok airport "under the care" of the UN refugee agency, the head of Thailand's immigration police says.  Thai immigration officials had tried to return Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, 18, to Kuwait, where her family is.  But she refused to board a flight on Monday and barricaded herself into her airport hotel room.  She said she feared her family would kill her as she had renounced Islam.  "My brothers and family and the Saudi embassy will be waiting for me in Kuwait," Ms Mohammed al-Qunun told Reuters.  "My life is in danger. My family threatens to kill me for the most trivial things."  Her relatives have not commented on her claims.  Rights groups including Human Rights Watch have expressed grave concerns for Ms Mohammed al-Qunun, who had travelled to Thailand for a connecting flight to Australia, where she hoped to seek asylum.  The Thai authorities said her status would be assessed by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).  The Australian government said it would closely monitor the case, calling Ms Mohammed al-Qunun's allegations "deeply concerning".  On Monday evening local time, Thailand's chief of immigration police Surachate Hakparn confirmed that Ms Mohammed al-Qunun was "allowed to stay", and that she "left the airport with the UNHCR".  He earlier said the country would "take care of her as best we can", adding: "She is now under the sovereignty of Thailand; no-one and no embassy can force her to go anywhere.  "Thailand is a land of smiles. We will not send anyone to die."  Mr Surachate said he would meet Saudi diplomats on Tuesday to clarify Thailand's decision.  Ms Mohammed al-Qunun tweeted that her father had arrived, "which worried and scared me a lot", but said she felt safe "under UNHCR protection with the agreement of Thailand authorities".  Thailand is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and provides no legal protection to asylum seekers although there are more than 100,000 refugees in the country.  An injunction filed by Thai lawyers in Bangkok criminal court to stop the deportation was dismissed earlier on Monday.  Ms Mohammed al-Qunun says that when she arrived in Bangkok on Saturday, her passport was seized by a Saudi diplomat who met her coming off the flight.  Thailand initially said she was being deported because she did not meet the requirements for a Thai visa.  However, Ms Mohammed al-Qunun insisted she had a visa for Australia, and that she never wanted to stay in Thailand.  Saudi Arabia said the Thai authorities had stopped the young woman for "violating the law".  On Monday, police chief Mr Surachate said the Thais had been tipped off by Saudi officials, adding: "The Saudi Arabia embassy contacted the immigration police... and said that the girl had run away from her parents and they feared for her safety."  Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, told the BBC: "It seems that the Thai government is manufacturing a story that she tried to apply for a visa and it was denied... in fact, she had an onward ticket to go to Australia, she didn't want to enter Thailand in the first place."  Ms Mohammed al-Qunun drew attention to her plight through social media posts over the weekend. She also gave a friend, Noura, access to her Twitter account, saying it was in case anything should happen to her.  "I shared my story and my pictures on social media and my father is so angry because I did this... I can't study and work in my country, so I want to be free and study and work as I want," she said.  Women in Saudi Arabia are subject to male guardianship laws, which mean they need a male relative's permission to work, travel, marry, open a bank account, or even leave prison.  Ms Mohammed al-Qunun wrote on Twitter that she had decided to share her name and details because she had "nothing to lose" now.  She has asked for asylum from governments around the world.  A photo appeared of her in her room as officials reportedly stood outside, waiting to put her on a flight back to Kuwait.  Ms Mohammed al-Qunun told the BBC that she had renounced Islam, and feared her family would kill her if she was sent back to Saudi Arabia.  Freedom of religion is not legally protected in the kingdom, and people who convert to another religion from Islam risk being charged with apostasy - or abandoning their religious beliefs.  The crime is legally punishable by death - although courts have not carried out a death sentence in recent years.  The BBC World Service spoke to Noura, the friend who is tweeting from Ms Mohammed al-Qunun's account. She said the pair knew each other from an online group for Saudi feminists, and that she herself had "escaped" Saudi Arabia because she is "an ex-Muslim".  Noura says Ms Mohammed al-Qunun is a student at a Saudi university, and that she believes her father works for the Saudi government.  "Her family kept her alone in the house for - I think for more than six months - because she cut her hair," she told the BBC.  Noura said she was speaking to Ms Mohammed al-Qunun "every 20 minutes", adding: "She is terrified."  Ms Mohammed al-Qunun's case echoes that of another Saudi woman who was in transit to Australia in April 2017.  Dina Ali Lasloom, 24, was en route from Kuwait via the Philippines but was taken back to Saudi Arabia from Manila airport by her family.  She used a Canadian tourist's phone to send a message, a video of which was posted to Twitter, saying her family would kill her.  Her fate on arriving back in Saudi Arabia remains unknown.


bbc--2019-01-14--Judge blocks Trumps new birth control rules in 13 states and Washington

Judge blocks Trump's new birth control rules in 13 states and Washington

A California judge has blocked new Trump administration regulations on birth control from applying in 13 states and Washington DC.  The rules allow employers and insurers to decline to provide birth control if doing so violates their "religious beliefs" or "moral convictions".  The rules were to come into effect nationwide from Monday.  But the judge granted an injunction stopping it applying in jurisdictions which are challenging the policy.  Plaintiffs in 13 states and the nation's capital argued that the new regulation should not come into force while they moved forward with lawsuits against it.  While Judge Haywood Gilliam did not make a final decision, he said the rules could mean a "substantial number" of women would lose birth control coverage, a "massive policy shift" which could breach federal law.  Fifty-five million women benefited from the original Obama-era rule, which made companies provide free birth control.  Before taking office, President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate the requirement.  California attorney general Xavier Becerra said in a statement: "It's 2019, yet the Trump administration is still trying to roll back women's rights.  "The law couldn't be clearer - employers have no business interfering in women's healthcare decisions."  But the US Department of Justice said in court documents that the new rules defended "a narrow class of sincere religious and moral objectors" and stopped them from conducting practices "that conflict with their beliefs".  Mr Becerra and his counterparts in the other states had asked for a nationwide injunction but Judge Gilliam limited the ruling to only those states moving against the new rules.  Mr Trump's rule change could force state governments to provide additional birth control coverage, Mr Becerra said, and pay health costs arising from unplanned pregnancies.  Aside from California and Washington DC, the new rules will not yet apply in Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Virginia.  The mandate requiring birth control coverage had been a key feature of so-called Obamacare - President Obama's efforts to overhaul the US healthcare system.  While the requirement included a provision letting religious institutions forgo birth control coverage for their employees, President Trump's rule change widened the number of employers and insurers who could opt out, including on the grounds of "moral convictions".  Conservative and religious groups welcomed the shift, while civil rights and health groups have criticised the change.


bbc--2019-01-16--Vice-presidents wife Karen Pence to teach at anti-LGBT school

Vice-president's wife Karen Pence to teach at anti-LGBT school

Second Lady Karen Pence, the wife of the US vice-president, will return to teaching art at a school that requires employees to oppose LGBT lifestyles.  The school in Springfield, Virginia, bars teachers from engaging in or condoning "homosexual or lesbian sexual activity" and "transgender identity".  Mrs Pence previously taught art at the school for more than a decade while her husband was a member of Congress.  A spokeswoman for Mrs Pence has hit back at criticism of her employer.  "Mrs Pence has returned to the school where she previously taught for 12 years," the second lady's spokeswoman Kara Brooks said in a statement.  "It's absurd that her decision to teach art to children at a Christian school, and the school's religious beliefs, are under attack."  According to a job application for the Immanuel Christian School, a private school, applicants must initial a passage promising to "live a personal life of moral purity".  It lists homosexuality along with premarital sex, polygamy, sexual harassment and sex abuse, among other factors, as examples of moral misconduct.  "I understand that the term 'marriage' has only one meaning; the uniting of one man and one woman," the document states.  A parent agreement on the elementary school's website says that they can "refuse admission" or "discontinue enrolment" of a pupil "if "the atmosphere or conduct within a particular home, the activities of a parent or guardian, or the activities of the student are counter to, or are in opposition to, the biblical lifestyle the school teaches".  In a statement on Tuesday, Mrs Pence said she is "excited to be back in the classroom and doing what I love to do, which is to teach art to elementary students".  Online, Mrs Pence has faced some sharp criticism for affiliating with the school while serving as second lady.  Others, however, have supported Mrs Pence in the face of the backlash, saying the school is just adhering to orthodox Christian values, like many others.  Vice-President Pence has previously come under fire by gay rights activists for his Christian evangelical beliefs which include opposition to gay marriage.  He has expressed support in the past for the controversial practice of gay conversion therapy and before becoming vice-president, as governor of Indiana he signed a bill that many said amounted to state-sponsored discrimination of LGBT people.  Mr Pence became the first vice-president to speak at the openly anti-LGBT Family Research Council's annual conference in 2018. The organisation has been labelled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  According to the LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, Americans in 29 states can be fired for their sexual preference.  Last year, a children's book Mrs Pence illustrated and authored with her daughter - Marlon Bundo's A Day in the Life of the Vice President - was lampooned by comedian John Oliver.  Oliver released a rival book, A Day In The Life of Marlon Bundo, telling a similar story, except the protagonist is a male bunny who falls in love and marries another male rabbit.  Some online users at the time criticised the comedian for seeking to "tear down Pence through his wife".