Don’t think it serves understanding of the Saudi rift with Qatar to unleash a volley of hatred toward Saudi Arabia. That is never a fruitful way to approach political analysis. If you can’t explain events other than by demonizing it is because you are unable to understand complexities.

That is not to exempt the Saudi regime from criticism since it is a construct of British & US colonialism, not unlike the state of Israel, & functions in that capacity. But do spare us the hating as you go about trying to understand what the hell is going on.

Just unfriended a long-time friend, a political person I admired, for posting a hateful cartoon about Muslims, associating them with stoning women, flogging gays, child suicide bombers, “bloody jihad massacres.” And here I just spent a lovely evening at a mosque with my friends from the book club at an iftar repast & was so graciously received by so many.

I registered a strong objection & soon after the cartoon disappeared. Too late. The damage was done. If your politics are based in hate, if you’re intellectually satisfied with stereotypes, if you’re not deeply disturbed by the rising tide of Islamophobia, then take a hike. I like to surround myself with those who believe in humanity. They’re the ones who change the world.

Frida Kahlo, by Mexican artist & human rights activist Monica Ramirez.

What Palestinians & Kashmiris share in common: grief & resistance to occupation.

“A funeral procession in Gaza City carries the body of Muhammad Majid Baker, a 28-year-old fisherman shot and fatally wounded by the Israeli navy while fishing off of Gaza’s coast, on 16 May.”

(Photo from The Palestinian Information Center)

Have been called a disgruntled old lady & a low achiever which is a fairly apt description but now it appears I may be a bedroom jihadi. Maybe not as dangerous as the ones in Kashmir but coming up close. Now will somebody tremble before my words?

Serendipitously–just after I posted Arundhati Roy’s comments about the Amarnath pilgrimage to a Hindu shrine in the Kashmiri Himalayas–I checked out the blog of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society & came across their recent report titled “Amarnath Yatra: A Militarized Pilgrimage.”

It will surely resonate with how Israel manufactures religious traditions on the sites of Muslim holy places & how Israeli & Christian Zionists use pilgrimages to Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem to establish claims to Israel as the homeland of Jews. Not unlike how Americans of Irish ancestry can lay claim to the Rhineland from whence their ancestors came 3,000 years ago.

https://jkccs.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/amarnath-report-2017.pdf

Review of JKCCS report in Wande Magazine: http://www.wandemag.com/amarnath-yatra-is-used-as-a-right-wing-nationalist-battle-cry-by-the-state/

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at India’s announcement that “bedroom jihadis” in Kashmir are sitting on beds & sofas pounding out propaganda on their computers & smart phones. “Armed with access to platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook & Twitter, there are fears that the new band of jihadis could instigate communal riots in the Valley.”

One Indian police official said social media in Kashmir has become a “virtual battleground.” In many ways that’s true because Kashmiri activists took advantage of social media to hammer & break the media blackout that prevailed for decades. The Indian occupation of Kashmir has become an issue only because of their work which is why India has repeatedly attempted to shut down the internet & access to social media.

Islamophobic propaganda is pernicious & hateful, as we know full well from US war-mongering & Assadist ideologues. But this bedroom jihadi stuff is a reduction to the absurd. What India calls bedroom jihadi is what has been called freedom of speech since the democratic revolutions against feudalism. Absurdity & exaggerations unfortunately do not reduce the impact of propaganda on the willing mind of nationalists & Islamophobes. Indian officials linked this new form of jihadi terrorism (free speech) to the upcoming Hindu pilgrimage to Amarnath shrine in the Kashmiri Himalayas.

Arundhati Roy once suggested that the growth of the Amarnath pilgrimage from 20,000 Hindus prior to 1989 to over half a million pilgrims now is due to the growth of Hindutva nationalism. Not unlike Protestants marching through Catholic neighborhoods in Northern Ireland. Indian officials are suggesting that the pilgrims will be attacked by armed guerrilla fighters but were unable to present a coherent view of the relationship of armed fighters to bedroom jihadis sitting on their beds & sofas pounding out fatwas on their smart phones. Or in truth, Kashmiris using social media to educate the world about their struggle against occupation.

There was one reported incident of an attack on the pilgrimage in 2000 but the majority of pilgrims who die are from climbing a mountain at an altitude of 3,888 m (12,756 ft) to get to the Amarnath cave. If there is an attack on the pilgrimage this year, look to agents provocateurs who are trying to discredit the struggle against the occupation.

Photo is image of bedroom jihadist which accompanied one of the many articles in Indian media. Try to distinguish farce from propaganda in this image.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

How much do you think it costs India every day to sustain the occupation of Kashmir? Several military bases, 700,000 troops must take billions better spent on social security which India does not provide the elderly & disabled. It could also be spent on schools, eliminating homelessness & child labor. Or it could be spent on cleaning up the numerous mountains of waste which are an environmental blight, a human health hazard, & where roaming cows feed on plastic.

No one mocks that Hindus hold cows as sacred. Because of the cow’s importance to human civilization, the cow is held sacred in many religious traditions. But if an animal is considered sacred in India–even more so than Muslim or Dalit lives–then one would think Hindutva nationalists would assure the highest standards of care for cows. Instead, the city of Lucknow in the state of Uttar Pradesh reports that 1,000 cows die extremely painful deaths every year due to plastic consumption. The chief veterinary officer said 20 to 25 cows are found dead on the streets every month from multiple organ failures caused by the clusters of rock solid plastic removed from their stomachs. Lucknow has a plastic ban which is apparently not enforced. Even if cows were not held sacred, this is an abomination.

There is a political economy to India’s occupation of Kashmir, a price paid by the working people & oppressed in India. Not the least of which is having their sons warped by serving as the agents of repression against Kashmiris.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo of cows grazing on plastic from Times of India)

“The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all. It allows Hindu chauvinists to target & victimize Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir. It’s all being stirred into a poisonous brew & administered intravenously, straight into our bloodstream.

At the heart of it all is a moral question. Does any government have the right to take away people’s liberty with military force?

India needs azadi from Kashmir just as much–if not more–than Kashmir needs azadi from India.”

–Arundhati Roy from “Azadi: The Only Thing Kashmiris Want.”
(Photo of student protests in Srinagar, May 2017 by Basit Zargar)

You can call it intolerant but I say the block button is ‘a girl’s best friend.’ If only we had such a zapper for the whole of our lives.