Pre-election political scene in India and the Muslims, Islam and Politics, NewAgeISlam.com

Islam and Politics

Pre-election political scene in India and the Muslims

By B. Raman

Even the former Tony Blair government in the UK, which was very supportive of the policies of the Bush administration, expressed its discomfort over the conditions in which the Muslim detainees were kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and in May 2006 publicly called for winding up the centre and transferring the detainees to the custody of the American civilian authorities from the custody of the military authorities. A similar demand has been voiced by many other democratic countries, by the International Committee of the Red Cross and by all human rights organisations of the West without exception. India's silence in this matter as well as over the repeated airstrikes by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, which killed a large number of civilians, was an important source of anger. This silence was seen as the inevitable outcome of the growing Indo-US strategic relationship.

http://newageislam.com/pre-election-political-scene-in-india-and-the-muslims/islam-and-politics/d/268

Message from the Bengaluru blasts, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Message from the Bengaluru blasts

By B. Raman

July 25, 2008

While timers were used to activate the improvised explosive devices, the explosive material used does not appear to have been of a sophisticated kind. Ammonium nitrate, mixed with a booster, was the preferred explosive in previous terrorist incidents, but one does not know whether ammonium nitrate was used in the Bengaluru blasts too.

Some TV reports speak of the possible use of gelatin sticks. If so, these blasts would resemble, from the point of view of the composition of the IEDs, the serial blasts in Coimbatore carried out by Al Ummah, a Muslim extremist organisation of South India, in February 1998 to protest against the alleged police excesses against Muslim youth after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Investigation into the Coimbatore blasts showed that Muslim youth had fabricated the IEDs with the help of explosive material stolen from the quarries of south India.

http://newageislam.com/message-from-the-bengaluru-blasts/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/308

Pakistan in Grip of Raging Ethnic Violence, The War within Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

The War within Islam

25 Aug 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com

Pakistan in Grip of Raging Ethnic Violence

By B. Raman August 25, 2011 The cycle of violence in Karachi will continue as none of the contending parties is likely to force a strategic confrontation which could destabilise Pakistan. Hence, such periodic confrontations will continue till the criminal-politician-police nexus is broken The civil war-like situation in Karachi continues without respite. Seventy-three persons belonging to different communities and religious sects were reported to have been killed — many of them in targeted shootings and some kidnapped and tortured to death — during four days of fresh violence between August 16 and 19. The level of violence considerably came down on August 20. http://www.newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/pakistan-in-grip-of-raging-ethnic-violence/d/5323