The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria has documented the deaths of 3,920 Palestinian refugees in the Syrian war since 2011. 1,198 refugees were killed under shelling; 1,069 were gunned down, 572 others were tortured to death in Assad’s prisons. Over 1,733 Palestinians have met mysterious fates in Syrian dungeons. Scores of Palestinian refugees have also been left wounded, including many who sustained limb amputation or eye loss.
Daily Archives: March 16, 2019
Just to clarify, my post about the hijab is being misunderstood & I don’t know if it’s because of language or the form in which I posted it. As a feminist, I believe in the rights of women to decide how they dress & don’t concern myself with telling Muslim women what to wear anymore than I do women who wear bikinis. My concern is solely with the way governments & rightwing forces are using the veil to justify persecution of Muslim women. Personally, I think the hijab is quite flattering but it’s not a fashion choice so much as a right for Muslim women to decide what to wear.
This young boy is Burhan Fayaz from Pulwama, Kashmir. This photo was taken in March 2017 during the funeral prayers of Burhan’s classmate named Aamir who was killed by Indian occupying forces in Pulwama. Perhaps his grief can put the political furor over the suicide bomber who killed 42 counterinsurgency troops at Pulwama in better perspective. At the time, was there international condemnation of Indian terrorism in Kashmir for killing a child? Did Indian media & celebrities go ballistic with nationalist sloganeering against Pakistan for inciting terrorism in Kashmir? Because most of us only recall Kashmiris grieving the death of the young boy or denouncing all the crimes committed against Kashmiris by occupying forces.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.
The Israeli army arrested 9-year-old Palestinian child Mohammad Abu Musallam from his home in the occupied West Bank. There must be umpteen international human rights laws against the arrest & terrorizing of little kids. And yet the US Congress wants us to pledge allegiance to the colonial, apartheid state of Israel. Build BDS instead.
“Not a single verse in the Quran says to wear a headscarf. The hijab is not from Islam.”
Of all the banal arguments used against the hijab, this one takes the cake. There is legislation in several countries banning both the hijab & the full veil. How does it escape small minds that whatever their personal views of the veil, laws against it are being used as a weapon to enforce persecution of Muslims. Their personal views, likely based in misogyny, are of absolutely no importance compared to the rights of Muslim women to decide what to wear for personal or religious reasons. If you’re concerned about the attire of women rather than their rights, you might be a boneheaded Islamophobe.
A no-nonsense message from the women of Kashmir:
“This Hindutva terrorist boasted of killing 97 Muslims in 2002, including ripping out a fetus from a dead woman’s womb with a sword. He was sentenced to life in prison but has been released early because killing Muslims is now hunky dory in Modi’s India.”
–Muddaththir Maqsood
(Photo is Babu Bajrangi who had been serving a life sentence for his criminal actions during the 2002 anti-Muslim genocide in Gujarat)
Have any Muslims written an analysis of the term “Islamofascism” so much in vogue after 9/11? The term originated primarily with the rightwing & is now used extensively by Islamophobic demagogues to describe everything from ISIS political formations to any guerrilla formation comprised of Muslims. But it’s acquired a certain cachet & is now used widely, including by liberals & radicals. The middle-class basis of fascist groups & that of guerrilla groups is the same & they share a common distrust of the working class. But there the political similarities end. No one would have referred to the guerrilla groups proliferating throughout Latin America in the 1960s & 1970s nor to the Irish IRA as fascist even though their political methods were criticized, even excoriated. Certainly no one would have identified guerrillaism as Christian or Catholic in character even though as a strategy it was prevalent in majority Catholic countries.
The term Islamofascism is deeply problematic & more suggestive of Islamophobic prejudice than it is political analysis of a complex & troubling phenomenon. My own opinion is that it should not be used even in regard to ISIS. As detestable & reactionary as that formation is, it does not further understanding to associate it with Islam & ratchet up the scare-mongering in place of an in-depth analysis of what political ideas & forces ISIS represents. The US & its allies use scare-mongering about ISIS to justify military intervention in Iraq, Syria, & increasingly elsewhere. But such formations would not exist in the first place were it not for US-European colonialism & collaboration with repressive regimes.
What the hell is the US State Department, in the person of Pompeo & Melania Trump, handing out human rights awards to extraordinary women for? They wouldn’t know human rights if they came up & bit them in the ass. Enough with these pointless honorifics!
It says something about the level of political discourse in the US that the writings of Ken Silverstein on Venezuela are treated as gospel. We laughed ourselves silly when Eva Bartlett went to Syria for a week & came back proclaiming “I’ve been to Syria & everything media tells you is a lie.” Now people who think themselves high-powered Marxists are posting a piece by Silverstein proclaiming “”I just got back from Venezuela &….everything you read or see about the country in the US media is a lie.” His reporting is utterly banal & superficial & although I politically detest Max Blumenthal & Ben Norton, Silverstein belittles the two schnooks personally rather than challenge them politically.
We’re getting a repeat in Venezuela of what we got in Syria to the extreme disadvantage of the Syrian & Venezuelan people. Too many reporters, as Silverstein once was, have become libertarians, utterly rudderless & unable to distinguish oppressive regimes from the just demands of oppressed working people. Silverstein joins an entire army of these guys, including Pilger, Fisk, Cockburn, who can’t even be trusted to report the news accurately because they’re too engaged with the regimes. Bartlett & Beeley, Blumenthal & Norton don’t count of course since they are propagandists, not journalists. But unfortunately that is what the reporters & Marxists have become.