Listen To The Muslim Woman’s Voice, Islam, Women and Feminism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam, Women and Feminism

Listen To The Muslim Woman’s Voice

By Zakia Soman

This sort of socio-economic backwardness could not have taken place overnight. Successive Governments have failed in their responsibility to enable Muslims to participate in India’s democracy. The nexus between the vote managers posing as community leaders and the supposedly secular political parties has ensured that the Muslim community remains mired in poverty, illiteracy, backwardness and insecurity. Living with communalism has become the fate of the ordinary Muslim. Since 1947 the community has been pushed to the margins, so much so that some experts feel that they are the Dalits of tomorrow. Worse, unlike the Dalits, Muslims do not have any legacy of social mobilisation and political consciousness. The Dalits were fortunate to have visionaries like B.R. Ambedkar and Jotiba Phule. Muslims have no leadership worth the name; and whoever claims to be a community leader should own up to the all-round failure.

There are two important reasons, among others, for this dismal situation. One, the failure of the state to fulfil its welfare responsibility towards citizens in spite of the guarantees given by the Constitution; and two, the failure of the Muslim leadership, if one believes it exists.

We are all aware how our democracy is marred by a corrupt and insincere polity which has no interest in the welfare of any of its excluded citizens, be it the Dalits, the Adivasis, the Muslims, the labour or the women. In the case of Muslims this is coupled with the failure to safeguard their lives and properties from communal violence. The discrimination faced by Muslims because of communal mindsets, particularly among the police and sections of the bureaucracy, is a commonly lived reality. Why else would the Sachar Committee recommend a full-fledged sensitisation programme? The community has little or no access to welfare schemes largely because of this communal mindset, apart from a general lack of education within the community. The rise of communal and fascist political parties has added to Muslim fear and insecurity.

http://newageislam.com/listen-to-the-muslim-woman%E2%80%99s-voice/islam,-women-and-feminism/d/2221

Smash The Opium Trade in Afghanistan, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Smash The Opium Trade in Afghanistan

K. Subrahmanyam

5 Aug 2008

Most of the poppy cultivation is in southern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistan border, by Pathans who form the core support base of Karzai. He is, therefore, ambivalent about the destruction of poppy crops. While the US Drug Enforcement Agency had urged destroying the crops through aerial spraying of herbicide, Karzai had objected to it on the ground it was not acceptable and has favoured ground destruction of the crop. Such ground destruction is less efficient, takes more manpower and needs security personnel to protect those destroying the crop from Taliban attacks. The result is that Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation is expanding and is expected to produce a bountiful crop this year.

The poppy crop is profitable for the farmer, local drug lord, corrupt bureaucracy and, above all, the Taliban which controls the area. In these circumstances, Karzai can only be the mayor of Kabul, as he is often described. According to Schweich, the Pentagon has taken a stand that eradication of narcotics is not part of their mission. The result is that Taliban gets unlimited resources to fight the war against the US and not allow Karzai to consolidate his rule. He is, therefore, of the view that unless Karzai is compelled to change his stand and the Pentagon treats narcotics elimination on a war footing, it would be difficult to bring the war against Taliban to an early conclusion.

http://newageislam.com/smash-the-opium-trade-in-afghanistan/war-on-terror/d/434

A Marshall plan for Pakistan’s Tribal Areas Needed, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

A Marshall plan for Pakistan’s Tribal Areas Needed

By Ayaz Wazir

The part of establishment and bureaucracy that benefits from the governance regime in the Tribal Areas has also perpetuated a lot of negative myths and propaganda about these regions and its inhabitants. For instance, an impression has been created that the tribal area is inaccessible and its people are difficult to govern. Nothing can be further from truth. This region is home to historic passes that connected the Subcontinent and Central Asia for thousands of years. Poverty and other circumstances in the tribal areas have forced its people to become on of the most mobile communities in Pakistan.

Today thousands of tribal families are living in the urban centres of NWFP and other major cities, which testify to the fact that they want a peaceful emancipated existence like other citizens of the land. The current security situation in FATA is the result of complex regional and international geo-politics. In fact, tribesmen are the worst victims of the prevailing situation in their homeland. The Pashtun society in the tribal areas is inherently egalitarian and thus best suited for practicing modern representative democracy. One of the first political reforms in the Tribal Areas will be to extend the Political Parties Act to FATA. This is perhaps the only region in the world where people have adult franchise but political parties are banned.

http://newageislam.com/a-marshall-plan-for-pakistan%E2%80%99s-tribal-areas-needed/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/278

Defending the ideology, Islam and Politics, NewAgeISlam.com

Islam and Politics

Defending the ideology

By Ayesha Siddiqa

Does the ideology then include the desires and aspirations of ethnic minorities like the Baloch, Sindhis, Mohajirs, Seraiki, Pakhtun and others who also want to be part of it but instead feel deprived? Or is it that we will always have to employ the power of the bullet in defence of this amorphous ideology as happened in the 1970s in East Pakistan and Balochistan or in the 1980s and 1990s in Sindh or more recently again in Balochistan?

The main issue with handing over the defence of ideology to any state bureaucracy is that the latter tends to define ideology in bureaucratic terms which means something that can be imagined and implemented easily. The nation has drifted from being a country for Muslims to one which is supposed to defend a larger religious ideology. Such conceptualisation becomes doubly problematic for both the nation and its armed forces that have been dragged over the years into defending a larger than life ideology.

http://newageislam.com/defending-the-ideology/islam-and-politics/d/69