Featured Post

SalaamOne NetWork

SalaamOne سلام   is   a nonprofit e-Forum to promote peace among humanity, through understanding and tolerance of religions, cul...

Gods of war

As traditions evolve with time, societies develop and become modernised. Individuals living in that society, influenced by these traditions, follow a certain culture. For instance, the tradition of war has always motivated and inspired people to fight, to kill or be killed. It is a culture that prefers fighting bravely and dying in the battlefield to fleeing from the conflict and saving one`s life. Anyone who advocates the latter is called a coward, humiliated and loses respect in the eyes of society.

Young people were trained from the age of seven in the art of warfare in Sparta and Spartan society expected their soldiers to emerge as victors from war or arrive as dead bodies hung over shields; their slogan being glory or death. In the battle of Thermopylae (480BC), 300 Spartans died in the battlefield fighting against the Persians and all of them were buried in a common grave, the epithet saying, `Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie` In ancient Athens, it was incumbent upon every citizen to serve in the army so the philosopher Socrates (399BC) fought in a battle as a common soldier; the famous dramatist Aeschylus was more proud of being a warrior than a writer and Thucydides, the historian, served as a general in the army. When he lost a battle, he was punished by being exiled from the city of Athens.

People were persuaded to fight either to show their loyalty to their patron, or on the pretext that the opponents were religiously misguided and had to be corrected or killed. Wars were also fought with a nationalist sentiment to glorify the nation.

Nearly every society glorified the role of a holy warrior and the concept of martyrdom justified war and made it sacred. Pericles (d.429BC), the Athenian leader, delivered oration speeches attributed to soldiers killed in the Peloponnesian wars. He eulogised their services as patriots who sacrificed their lives for the honour of their land.

Culturally, war has become an ideology that we use in our daily life as a solution to all problems. It is not uncommon for politicians to raise slogans like `war against poverty`, `war against crime and `war against terrorism`.

Before the First World War, the European nations were entwined in crises which led to war and bloodletting as a solution of their political and economic problems. When the war was over, it changed the map of Europe; wiping out the Hapsburg, the Russian and the Ottoman Empires. In Germany, monarchy came to an end, while the Russian Revolution of 1917 changed the future of Russia. The common people paid a heavy price for the war.It has been the policy of resourceful nations to assert their supremacy by invading and subduing weaker nations through war. They used war as a tool to establish their domination. In the Battle of Zama (202BC), when Hannibal, the Carthaginian general met his opponent Scipio Africanus and proposed a peaceful settlement of the matter, Scipio refused to negotiate. Realising Hannibal`s weakness, he fought a battle, defeated Hannibal and settled matters on his own terms.

In traditional historiography, the rise of nations is measured by their conquest and expansion of territories. The role of warriors and generals is glorified while the intellectual contribution of scholars is ignored. Generally, it is assumed that when a nation is exhausted militarily, its power has collapsed, as in the case of the Persian and the Roman empires.

Although nations have experienced the horrors of war, yet sentiments against war remain undeveloped and immature. Nations try to invent and equip themselves with more lethal weapons to win the arms race. In fact, it earns them respect and prestige in the eye of others. The ruling classes deprive common people of their basic needs on the pretext of security. Sadly, it has become an honour to be a nuclear power, the price of which is tremendously high.

Since war is portrayed as laudable and sacred in traditional history, peopledo not fully comprehend the horrific results of war but instead, romanticise it and accept it as a culture or tradition which is a part and parcel of their life.

People must realise that war is not the solution to problems. There are alternatives to change the psyche of a nationand to end conflicts among nations through negotiation and dialogue.

History should be rewritten to condemn war and bring to justice those responsible for bloodshed during war.

Nations who were aggressors and invaders should be compelled to admit to andaccept the damage and suffering that they caused just like Germany did in regard to the Second World War. The same policy should be adopted by colonial countries as well as the US for its intervention in Asian, Af`rican and Latin American countries.
By M ubarak Ali: http://epaper.dawn.com/DetailNews.php?StoryText=26_01_2014_424_003
Jihad: http://quran-pedia.blogspot.com/2011/07/jihad.html
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Labels: , , ,

As Afghan Pullout Looms, U.S. Urged to Rethink Pakistan Ties

Neither the police nor the paramilitary forces have been unable to control targeted killings of aid workers in Karachi. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS
With the 2014 deadline for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in sight, analysts here are urging Washington policymakers to drop the term ‘Af-Pak’ and recognise the importance of Pakistan beyond its implications for Afghanistan.

U.S.-Pakistan relations have for too long focused on the Afghan security question, according to a new report from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a Washington think tank. Such a focus, CFR researchers warn, neglects the high strategic importance Islamabad has for the United States in the region.

“Pakistan’s internal security is not something the U.S. can confront directly.” -- Daniel S. Markey
“U.S. policy in Pakistan has consistently been linked to Afghanistan and has fallen under the broader heading of Af-Pak – a label that has never been very popular in Pakistan and one that has also been seen as degrading,” Daniel S. Markey, a senior fellow at the CFR and author of the new report, told IPS.

“But as the U.S. is drawing down in Afghanistan and in many ways signalling a reduced commitment there, [it] ought to rethink its Pakistan strategy.”

A revised approach to Pakistan would also advance U.S. interests in Asia, Markey’s analysis suggests, particularly in light of President Barack Obama’s efforts to refocus U.S. policy on Asia.

Any new approach would need to have two main strategies, the report suggests. First, Washington will have to seriously engage with the security threats that it currently faces in Pakistan, including threats from terrorist organisations but also from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and its delicate relationship with India.

The second and perhaps more groundbreaking strategy would see the United States pushing Pakistan into closer economic integration with regional economic powers, particularly India and China.

The first strategy, however, comes with its limits.

“Pakistan’s internal security is not something the U.S. can confront directly,” Markey said. “It’s Pakistan’s problem, and one that will require Pakistan’s political leadership directly.”

At the same time, the author notes that Washington can provide some assistance, such as equipment and training. This is a strategy Washington has used in the past, including in its assistance to Islamabad while fighting the Taliban.

Growing mistrust

Besides being difficult in practice, the limited role the United States can play inside Pakistan is also a consequence of the deep mistrust Pakistanis harbour towards Washington.

One of the recommendations highlighted by the report emphasises how U.S. assistance to Islamabad should be conditioned on a show of Pakistan’s true commitment to fighting terrorism.

“U.S. military aid to Pakistan should not be linked primarily to the Afghanistan war,” the report argues. “It should instead be conditioned on Pakistan’s effort to address internal security threats… and on Pakistan’s overall commitment to countering violent extremism on its soil.”

Indeed, the problem of mistrust may be one of the biggest hurdles the U.S. will have to overcome in order to achieve its long-term interests in the region.

“One of the reasons the U.S. doesn’t have much leverage inside Pakistan is that there’s a lot of mistrust and hostility between the two sides, particularly when it comes to the security establishment,” Michael Kugelman, senior programme associate for South Asia at the Wilson Centre, a think tank here, told IPS.

This mistrust, Kugelman notes, is the result of divergent views between Washington and Islamabad when it comes to defining a threat and how to respond to one.

According to analysts, the United States sees all militant groups as potential threats, urging for tough action regardless of the groups’ targets. But for the Pakistani leadership, the differences matter.

“Pakistanis tend to see some militant groups as more dangerous than others, especially those that target the government,” Kugelman said.

“The U.S. will need to lower its expectations and stop setting these very high goals of getting the Pakistani government to crackdown on all militants. That’s just not going to happen.”

Regional economics

Markey’s report also calls for the United States to look at Pakistan from an economic perspective, particularly in light of its relationship with India and China.

“U.S. diplomats and trade officials should negotiate a preferential U.S. trade access deal for India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, conditioned on reduced barriers to intraregional trade,” the report notes.

However, this does not mean that the U.S. should get involved in a mediation of the multiple disagreements that currently exist between India and Pakistan, Markey said.

“Rather, the U.S. should encourage both sides to realise the incentives of more bilateral integration,” he noted. “There is no other way in which Pakistan can find prosperity unless they link it to a more regional perspective.”

According to recent statistics, India-Pakistan trade today is slightly tilted towards India, with New Delhi providing more goods to Islamabad than vice-versa. Much of this is due to Pakistan’s limited home-grown resources when it comes to manufacturing and resource-extraction.

The Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD), a think tank, on Wednesday noted that the U.S. government could do more to improve Pakistan’s economy, including by supporting the efforts of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Asian Development Bank “to promote … Pakistani reform efforts”.

India and Pakistan have already begun working towards a normalisation of their trade relationship, with Pakistan currently a few steps away from eliminating a list that forbids it from trading certain goods with New Delhi.

Yet Kugelman again cautions against Washington playing too overt a role in its push for trade normalisation.

“Very quietly, subtly and away from the cameras, Washington can push them both to take a final step and ensure that the two can finally establish a MFN relationship,” he said, referring to the ‘most favoured nation’ status that countries assign to each other when they normalise trade in a mutually beneficial agreement.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to evaluate its exit strategy from the 12-year-old Afghan conflict, as well as Washington’s evolving strategic vision in Central Asia following the withdrawal. This strategy, and its impact, is being examined intently in both Washington and Islamabad.

“Both sides are at the very least trying to make their way through the endgame in the war in Afghanistan,” the CFR’s Markey said, noting that Pakistani authorities have begun “to worry about what will happen once the U.S. leaves Afghanistan.”
By By Ramy Srour
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/afghan-pullout-looms-u-s-urged-rethink-pakistan-ties/
Read Urdu translation: http://e.dunya.com.pk/detail.php?date=2014-01-26&edition=LHR&id=851211_11386214

Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Labels: , , , , ,

Close Guantánamo

ONE of President Barack Obama’s first official acts in January 2009 was to sign an executive order to close the US military detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year.

After eight years of detentions at Guantánamo, this held out a promise of change. But the order’s failure to recognise the USA’s human rights obligations, coupled with the Obama administration’s adoption of its predecessor’s flawed “law of war” framework, have brought no end to the indefinite detentions.

Jan 22, 2014 will mark five years since President Obama’s executive order. In the meantime, the prison camp has continued to operate in a human rights vacuum.

The Guantánamo detentions remain an affront to international human rights principles and undermine the USA’s credibility. As the prison camp enters its 13th year, the world must take the US to task for its abject failure to live up to the international human rights standards it so often demands of others.

Twelve years after the first detainees were brought to Guantánamo, strapped down in planes like cargo, more than 150 men are still held there. Most of them have never been charged or tried. Respecting the victims’ right to justice would have meant charging and bringing such individuals to fair trial in ordinary civilian courts years ago.

Despite a US Supreme Court ruling — five and a half years ago — that the Guantánamo detainees had the constitutional right to a ‘prompt’ hearing to challenge the lawfulness of their detentions, some detainees have yet to have a habeas corpus ruling.

In the twisted legal logic of Guantánamo, even a judicial finding that an individual’s detention is unlawful may not mean his immediate release.

The transfer last month of three Chinese ethnic Uighur men to Slovakia came more than five years after a US federal judge ruled their detention unlawful. If the US would do what it asks other countries to do — to take into the US released detainees who cannot be repatriated — the Uighurs could have been released immediately after the judicial ruling in their case.

More than 70 others — the majority of them Yemenis — have been “approved for transfer”, but the USA’s view of the security situation in their home countries and other issues have delayed their release.

A few detainees face trial under a military commission system that does not meet international fair trial standards. Six currently face the possibility of the death penalty.

Of the almost 800 detainees that have been held there, only seven — or less than 1pc — have been convicted under the military commission system — five of whom pleaded guilty under pre-trial agreements that promised a possible way out of the base.

Meanwhile, the absence of accountability, truth and remedy for human rights violations committed against former and current Guantánamo detainees is a festering injustice that leaves the US in serious violation of its international human rights obligations.

Guantánamo detainees have been tortured and subjected to other ill-treatment — either in Guantánamo or elsewhere in US custody before they got there — including ‘water-boarding’, being held in prolonged isolation, and, more recently, cruel force-feeding procedures in response to a mass hunger strike in protest at their ongoing detention. Nine detainees have died in custody — two of natural causes and seven suicides.

If any other country was responsible for this human rights vacuum, it would surely draw the condemnation of the US. But the US has allowed the Guantánamo detentions and the accountability gap to persist even as it has continued to trumpet its commitment to human rights.

This double standard has not gone unnoticed. Other governments, United Nations experts and non-governmental organisations have been among those who have called for an end to the Guantánamo detentions.

Even the first commander of detentions at the base, now retired Maj Gen Michael Lehnert, recently said that the Guantánamo detention facility “should never have been opened”. In his estimation, the detention and torture there had “squandered the goodwill of the world” following the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.

Closing Guantánamo must mean ending the violations it has come to represent — simply relocating them is unacceptable. The world should press the US to drop its flawed “global war” legal framework. Congress and the Obama administration should commit to a counterterrorism strategy that fully complies with international law and standards.

No line can be drawn under Guantánamo without full accountability for the human rights violations, including crimes under international law, that have been committed at the base and elsewhere in the USA’s “global war on terror”.

Closing the detention centre won’t bring about such accountability overnight. But doing so remains an important — and necessary — step in the right direction.

By:  ERIKA GUEVARA ROSAS; director for the Americas at Amnesty International.
http://m.dawn.com/news/1081708/close-guantanamo

Labels: , , , , ,

Why we love & cheat?

Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes on a tricky topic – love – and explains its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its social importance. She closes with a warning about the potential disaster inherent in antidepressant abuse.


Labels: , , , ,

Revolt and renaissance in Muslim World

Libya has become 'militialand'; Algeria is a powder keg; Morocco's polity is vulnerable to radical forces. The virus of violence is spreading to additional regions: Central Asia, India, Myanmar and wherever Muslim peoples are facing injustice or suppression. It is high time for the Muslim world to take its destiny in its own hands. Muslim statesmen and leaders should seek to capture the momentum produced by today's violent events in order to promote a political,
economic and social renaissance in the Islamic world.

A first step should be to convene an emergency summit of the most powerful Islamic countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia. It should agree: one, not to support violence by sectarian or ethnic factions in other Muslim countries, and two, launch a collective campaign against all forms of terrorism. Keep reading >> http://www.dawn.com/news/1081297/revolt-and-renaissance
Labels: , , , ,

What happens in Egypt won`t stay in Egypt ما يحدث في مصر وفاز `ر البقاء في مصر

EGYPT`S Muslim Brotherhood is not a terrorist movement, at least not currently. But the move by the military-led government to ban it from politics and declare it a `terrorist organisation` may become a self fulfilling prophecy. Brotherhood members and donors risk prosecution and imprisonment, and the ban is potentially crippling to the vast network of schools, clinics and other social services the Brotherhood runs and to the poor Egyptians who have long relied on them.

The crackdown will undoubtedly drive some of the Brotherhood`s members to terrorism. Already, the military ouster of Brotherhood leader and elected president Mohammed Morsi in July has lent strength to Al Qaeda`s long-held view that electoral politics is treacherous and that the Islamist project can be advanced only through violence. The government`s action has thrown together adherents of two streams of Islamism that had opposed one another and has created a new wave of recruits for violent extremism.

Egypt`s path is now clear: it is on the road to even greater repression, strife and instability. The radicalisation of the Brotherhood seems more a question of `when,` not `if.

In the name of fighting terrorism, the regime is making the problem far worse.

وما يحدث في مصر وفاز `ر البقاء في مصر. اضطر الحيازة مرسي سيصدره الإخوان الانضمام إلى تدابير لاحتواء حماس في غزة، ولكن الانقلاب يعطي حوافز الإخوان لتعزيز العلاقات مع أبناء الإرهابية.
مع مصر التي تواجه بالفعل تحديات الشرطة تدفق الأسلحة والأشخاص عبر حدودها، يمكن أن تؤدي إلى تفاقم القمع التطرف في غزة وعبر ليبيا وبقية شمال أفريقيا.

And what happens in Egypt won`t stay in Egypt. Morsi`s tenure forced the Brotherhood to accede to measures to contain Hamas in Gaza, but the coup gives the Brotherhood incentives to strengthen ties with its terrorist cousins. With Egypt already facing challenges policing the flow of arms and people across its borders, the crackdown could exacerbate extremism in Gaza and across Libya and the rest of North Africa.

Today, the number of Brotherhood supporters is hard to gauge: Though Morsi won runoff elections with more than 13 million votes, the Brotherhood`s share of the parliamentary vote was closer to 35 per cent, and its popularity fell further given its poor performance in power. So a minority of number of Egyptians are committed backers, and an even smaller number are considered members of the organisation. But whatever the exact figure, it is clear that millions of Egyptians support the Brotherhood.

Arrests of major Brotherhood leaders followed the coup, and the subsequent crackdown killed more than 1,000 Egyptians. The military regime hopes to crush the Brotherhood, eliminating its leadership and intimidating its followers. Neither US calls for reconciliation nor the Obama administration`s belated October decision to tem-porarily freeze some forms of aid have had much impact on what most participants see as an existential struggle for the future of Egypt. Saudi Arabia and other gulf allies have provided billions of dollars to the military-led government far more than US aid and promised to make up any shortfall should Washington further cut support.

Brotherhood leaders, including the ousted president, are being put on trial, and there appear to be no prospects for a compromise that might bring Brotherhood elements back into the political system.

The Brotherhood is vaunted for its hierarchy and discipline and so far, it has not called its members to arms. But this could change as the government further criminalises the group. In the past, the Brotherhood weathered its exclusion from political power by concentrating on civic activism. This time, however, the regime has banned the Brotherhood outright and seized its assets, denying the movement outlets for members who want to build their vision of an Islamic society.

Given this, Egyptians who supported or joined the Brotherhood may take up arms out of frustration with politics. In the past, jihadi groups often excoriated the Brotherhood for participating in controlled elections and for being insufficiently zealous at home and abroad. Now they cite the coup as proof that America and its local lackeys will not allow their Islamist project to flourish. Islamists in other Arab countries are watching and will draw lessons as well.

Thus, one threat of Islamist radicalisation in Egypt is the cultivation of a new generation of extremist recruits for the global jihadi cause.

In addition, the imprisonment and prosecution of the senior Brotherhood leadership weaken organisational discipline, particularly to enforce nonviolence. Brotherhood cells might act on their own to vent frustration or to avenge dead comrades, provoking a government response that is likely to perpetuate violence and repression. If even a fraction of the millions of Brotherhood supporters embrace violence, that means tens of thousands of Egyptians are potential recruits for jihadis.

The situation has implications for the security of Israel and the US. The Egyptian regime is primarily focused right now on securing its hold on power, while America`s interests lie in the stability of Egypt and the region. The United States cannot prevent the radicalisation of the Brotherhood, but it can seek to mitigate its effects on US security.

The Brotherhood might become only a shadow of its former self. But without some peaceful means to participate in shaping their country`s future, the millions of Egyptians who support the Brotherhood may feel no stake in sustaining that future, and some will seek instead to tear it down.

-By arrangement with Washington Post/Bloomberg News Service
By Daniel Byman & Tamara Cofman Wittes: http://epaper.dawn.com/?page=12_01_2014_013

Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Labels: , , , , ,

The legacy of war- last 100 years of war

In unforgettable encounter in Graham Greene`s The Quiet American set in the 1950s, during waning French colonialism in Indochina finds the protagonist Thomas Fowler, a middle-aged, cynical British journalist, accompanying French pilot Captain Trouin as an observer on a B-26 sortie in Northern Vietnam. Fourteen times Trouin and Fowler`s B.26 dive-bombs a target nestled deep amidst mountains, before climbing back up and aligning for the next strike. Bombs are released, machine guns roar and the smell of cordite fills the cockpit as Fowler feels the weight lift of f his chest and his stomach fall away,`spiralling down like a suicide to the ground.

Although this continues for 40 minutes, Fowler`s lofty view from 3,000 meters gives no indication of the target, whether it is hit, or of the casualties.

His job done, Captain Trouin turns the B-26 towards home, when without warning, the protagonist finds the plane diving again, tearing away from the `gnarled and fissured forests` and screaming over `neglected rice fields,` aimed like a bullet at a lone sampan idling on the river.

`The cannon gave a single burst of tracer, and the sampan blew apart in a shower of sparks.`The plane gained altitude for the final time, and again set a course for home having added its `little quota to the world`s dead.` Satisfied, Captain Trouin addresses Fowler: `We will make a little detour. The sunset is wonderful on the calcaire. You must not miss it.` Fowler describes him as a `kindly host ... showing the beauty of his estate, and for a hundred miles we trailed the sunset over the Baie d`Along.

This encounter, although understated when compared to the grisly descriptions of war, is startling in its binaries: French imperialism (by the late 1940s increasingly financed by the United States) verses a primordial Vietnamese impulse for selfdetermination; the idyllic sampan symbolising an age-old affinity between humans and Asia`s life-sustaining rivers versus the fighter-bomber, a product of the Western war-making machinery; the merciless extermination of an unthreatening boat followed by an act as genteel as enjoying a sunset. And yet, when scrutinised carefully, these same binaries essentially, the choosing of war versus not appear not as opposites, and more as shards fused across the torn and shattered landscape of the last 100 years of human history, a continuum in which war and non-war sometimes occur simultaneously, other times have one giving way to the other, all the time remaining part of macro-historical processes that made the modern world: industrial expansion, imperial exploitation, transnational capitalism, virulent nationalism, ideological and religious fundamentalisms.This year the world shall mark one hundred years to the start of the First World War (1914-1918), the first conflict in history that claims to have singularly engulfed much of humanity. Twenty-fourteen shall also herald the rollback of foreign militaries from Afghanistan, an event of extreme regional importance, and of no small global significance, either. As we pause to take stock of these two pivotal events separated by a century and along the way reflect on literally what are countless acts of violence against humanity in between one thing that shall be starkly clear is that this was humanity`s most violent century. As authors and humanists, we need to ask: how do we explain this? Conventional explanations for war invariably return to the Westphalian idea of state sovereignty, a concept that came about following the namesake treaty in 1648 that temporarily brought respite to a Europe torn apart by decades of war; from the Treaty of Westphalia on, war was increasingly seen as resulting from aberrations of state sovereignty. But Westphalian ideals of sovereignty tend to compartmentalise war, where each conflict is seen to stem from a series of events unique to it: the First World War from alliances between the Great Powers (Britain, France, Germany, the Ottoman Empire and Russia) and the murder of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914; the Second World War from the rise of the National Socialism in Germany in the 1930s and Japanese imperialism in Asia beginningwith the establishment of a puppet regime in Manchuria Manchuguo in 1931; the Korean War with the crossing of the 38th parallel in the summer of 1950; the Vietnam War with the Gulf of Tonkin `incident` in August 1964, and so on. Put another way, our conventional understanding of war describes it as a process with a cause, a beginning, and an end.

My purpose is not to dispute wellestablished causes of war, nor to reduce this centenary to a symbolic passage of time. Rather, as a historian I am perplexed that the First World War at the time dubbed as `the war that will end all war` by author H.G. Wells in fact, gave way to a hundred years in which we, as humanity, scarcely had a moment`s peace.

Furthermore, given how organised violence by or against the state has emerged as a permanent backdrop to our lives the ubiquitous `new normal` should we not rethink war as an aberration of state sovereignty and as an event with a beginning and an end? Instead, should war not be a process that has played as a background throughout our wretched century, a process of modernity where the early-20th century ratio of one civilian death for every ten soldiers` death would reverse itself a hundred years later? Should not the dirty wars of South America, the resource wars of central and west Africa, the proxy wars of southern Africa and in the Horn of Africa, the genocidal exterminations of indigenous people in Central America in the 1980s, the out-of-control and undeclared `9/11 wars`across Afro-Eurasia, the pogrom against religious and ethnic minorities in so many parts of the world, including Pakistan, all be considered global wars in how they were triggered and sustained by global processes? Is this not the most enduring legacy of this century of war? The centenary of the First World War shall sooner or later turn to the issue of casualties, of which there were about 20 million. When added with the casualties of the Second World War (1939-1945) and those from the 20th and 21st century conflicts that followed, the number of war casualties between 1914 and the present creeps upward of 150 million. The horror of these statistics aside, I am compelled to note as historian and humanist that an endearing legacy of our century of war is how commonplace war has become. `I wanted to live outside of history,` the protagonist in J. M. Coetzee`s Waiting for the Barbarians reflects remorsefully, `I wanted to live outside the history that Empire imposes on its subjects.` But like the magistrate in Coetzee`s masterful novel, this luxury is not ours, and likely shall not be in this lifetime. As a humanity, our plight is perhaps more like Thomas Fowler`s on the homeward flight of the B-26, looking wistfully out of the cockpit, trailing a sunset along the limestone cliffs of the Ha Long Bay as the `wounds of murder cease to bleed.` E Hasan H. Karrar is an Assistant Professor of History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences

http://epaper.dawn.com/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=05_01_2014_465_001

Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Labels: ,

Curb Religious Extremism through Knowledge

For much of his lif e Charlemagne (800814), also known as Charles the Great was illiterate, but he was an enthusiastic promoter of literacy in others.

Throughout his empire, he used the church and the well-organised clergy to undertake the task of spreading literacy. Realising the importance of education, the authorities of the church extended him full support and cathedral schools were founded in church buildings where the curriculum was designed to make the young students devout Christians.

Later, the famous theologian Thomas Aquinas (d.1274) integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian beliefs, which became known as Aristotelian scholasticism. The curriculum emphasised knowledge of the absolute truth by revclation and not by any other means and methods while the association between Aristotle and Christianity became quite profound.

The curriculum was based on the belief that only tradition and past values could stabilise the society as these are tried and tested. Aristotelian scholasticism endorsed traditional ideas and that these should be respected, honoured and observed without any endeavour to change or challenge them with innovation.

Throughout Europe, this curriculum was enforced in all universities and the CambridgeUniversity charter stated that students should not deviate from, criticise or reject it. Reading any other literature which contradicted the prescribed curriculum was prohibited. As a result, the students blindly f`ollowed existing traditions and customs without creating new ideals and thoughts. The main objective of` the education system was to strengthen the Christian faith and prevent any kind of`questioning or rebellion.

For the many years that this system prevailed, students remained occupied with religious activity and were not allowed to investigate, probe and research for new venues of knowledge.

Consequently, the universities failed to respond to the challenges of time.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the European society went through a radical change due to political, social and economic development.

Although new ideas, scientific inventions and technological innovation were needed to meet modern day challenges, yet the universities continued to follow the outdated and obsolete educational system and the dogmatic church authorities ref`used to alter the curriculum.

To meet the demands of their time, scholars and philosophers decided to establish their own research institutions and societies under royal patronage. In 1660, the Royal Society of` London was established and committees of scientists andscholars from the fields of physics, chemistry, agriculture, engineering and architecture were constituted. The members of these committees undertook respective research projects, presented their papers in discussions and research journals were published in order to disseminate scientific knowledge to the general public.

These scholars and scientists challenged outdated ideas and a new vision emerged paving the way f`or intellectuals, scientific and technological revolution which transformed the European society.

Considering the above as a case study, there is a lesson for us to learn. Our public universities have f`ailed to produce new ideas, thoughts and concepts required to understand the ongoing problems in our society. Instead ol` producing creators of knowledge, they have produced consumers. Our universities continue to l`ollow old and rusted curricula which have no relevance to our society.

On the other hand, private universities, like tuition centres, are commercial set-ups which have no concept of training young minds to undertake social responsibility, nor to equip them with new ideas. Since social sciences and humanities are not included in their curricula, they produce robots without thinking minds. Students are educated according to the needs of the market and after completing their education, they only want to pursue material interests and have no desire to enlighten the society or to change their environment. Sadly, private universities are producing an incompetent, educated class empowered with only self-interest and materialistic values.

There is a need to establish independent research institutions in order to understand our problems and transform the society. Unless the society supports independent research institutions that will provide relevant knowledge to reconstruct and reshape political, social and economic structure, there is not much hope of` survival in the competitive world of knowledge.
by Mubarak Ali : http://epaper.dawn.com/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=05_01_2014_424_003
  1. Tribulation and Discord in Muslim World & Future
  2. Learning & Science
  3. Islamic Society & Culture

Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Labels: , , , , ,

Religious Extremism and Violence in Muslim World - Deadly caution

   
Most Muslim countries today are facing violence from an assortment of` religious extremist outfits. Some governments, like the onesin countries like Egypt, Mali and Syria, have gone all-out to crush the extremists, whereas others have struggled to reach any consistency at all, blowing hot and cold against the extremists.

This inconsistency is awkwardly present in even those countries that have been facing the major brunt of extremist violence, such as Pakistan, and recently, Yemen.

There is a nervousness in the state and governments of most Muslim countries that an allout war with the resourceful and ruthless Islamist organisations may lead to the kind ofspiraling instability being experienced in Egypt, Syria and Mali.

Consequently, extremist violence in places like Pakistan and Algeria is only drawing a confined and ad hoc response from the state and the government; and just like in Muslim countries where extremist violence is not as pronounced, the idea in Pakistan and Algeria too is to contain this violence, rather than eliminate it.

Only time will tell whether an all-out assault on extremist polities and action was a more worthy route to eradicate extremism or the more cautious and nervy one.

The answer to this may lie in a rather curious and prominent fact of history that somehow continues to go missing in most present-day discour-ses on the subject of the rise of religious extremism in Muslim countries.

Of course, the immediate roots of this violence can easily and clearly be traced to events like American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan after the tragic 9/l 1 episode in 2001.

Going back a little further, roots of extremist violence are also as clearly present in the way thousands of Muslims were indoctrinated, trained, armed and funded by America, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the so-called `antiSoviet jihad` in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and in which numerous Muslim governments allowed many of their citizens to fight.

But even though these two episodes remain prominent in most recent discourses about the rise of extremism in the Muslim world, there is another collective episode that some political scholars and historians have pointed out in explaining the modern roots of extremism in Muslim countries.

This episode, these scholars believe, can also be used to warn those Muslim states and governments that are being overtly cautious in their policies regarding extremism, believing that they will be able to co-opt militant outfits into the mainstream scheme of`things and sof`ten their blow.

The 1970s is the era that contains the deepest roots of what mutated into outright extremist violence in the decades that followed.

Most modern-day Muslim-majority countries gained their independence from European colonial powers between the late 1940s and early 1960s. Nationalist movements and then governments in many of these countries were dominated by secular nationalists.

In fact, in most Arab countries the governments were overtly secular and allied to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. A number of Muslim countries across the 1960s and car-ly 1970s experienced a surge in populist secular nationalism that attempted to chart a course between American capitalism and Soviet communism.

The attempt not only opposed the US, but also came down hard on the religious right and Islamic political organisations, accusing them of being an expression of capitalist exploitation and social backwardness.

A number of these religious outfits were brutally crushed and left to wither away. But, alas, as this was being done, leftist outfits grew in size and influence and a time came when they began to challenge the secular regimes` right to power.

Secular governments in Tunisia, Algeria, Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, Somalia and Sudan reacted sharply to this challenge in the mid1970s; a challenge that, in hindsight today, seems to have been an entirely exaggerated threat.

Egypt`s Anwar Sadat who replaced the populist and famous exponent of `Arab Socialism` and nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser, in 1970, began to pull Egypt out from the Soviet orbit and bring it closer to the US and the oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

He l`aced opposition f`rom lel`tists and `Nasserists` from within his own regime. In response, he tried to neutralise them by suddenly lifting the curbs and bans on religious organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood and its student wing.

The same thing happened in Tunisia and Morocco in the same period where the pro-West secular regimes allowed religious parties to flourish on university campuses that had become hotbeds of leftist groups.

In Algeria, the left-leaning and staunchly secular regime began to believe that radical communists were its greatest challenge. It began toslowly lift the bans it had imposed on various Islamic organisations.

In Pakistan, the populist left-leaning government of Z.A. Bhutto saw an `Indian and Soviet hand` in 1973`s labour unrest in Karachi and in the Baloch insurgency against the state.

He gradually began toexpunge radical socialists from his party and oversaw the l`ragmentation ol` leftist student outfits and the consequential proliferation of right-wing student groups on university campuses.

Responding to an exaggerated `communist threat` and demonstrating a cautious and controlled appeasement of the religious groups at the behest of oil-rich Arab monarchies, these regimes were the first to begin lifting the lid of a Pandora`s Box that would go on to explode in their own faces.

Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by a radical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that had enjoyed great freedom during his regime. Z.A.

Bhutto was toppled in a reactionary coup that followed a right-wing protest movement led by parties that Bhutto had tried to appease. Somalia and Sudan plunged into civil wars. And Algerian leader, Mohammad Boudiaf, was murdered by an Islamist in 1992.

The policy of appeasement had emboldened religious organisations and given them space and an opening to infiltrate various sections of the state and society, that were once off-limits to them.

The emboldening and circumstances like the Afghan civil war saw many ol` these organisations mutating and producing offshoots that have been some of the leading reasons behind the violence that has gripped numerous Muslim countries from the 1980s onwards.

As mentioned earlier, a handful of Muslim states have decided to go all-out to now crush these outfits, but most Muslim nations facing the same violence have stuck to giving the extremists a chance to reintegrate into mainstream politics and society.

If examples of appeasement in this respect and reintegration given here are anything to go by, I believe the policies will be a failure and would continue to encourage further mutations of extremism and even more violence.


Comments
In between two extremes of Secularism and Religious extremism, there is middle ground, Khateebs and Mosque Imams (prayer leaders) need to be educated understand the "Peaceful and tolerant Islam". Nothing has been done at state level to take care of ideological battlefield. This will destroy the false extremist ideology, but ruling elite has to forego corrupt practices.
Related:
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)