Poster by Shahid Jeelani
Monthly Archives: February 2020
It staggers the mind that Trump is in India making a $3-billion military defense deal with Modi whilst Hindutva mobs are prowling the streets hunting down Muslims. Those who call for US humanitarian intervention in Syria to save the Arab Spring really have to wrap their heads around that reality which exposes the character of the US Pentagon. Although actually, the US has always been militarily involved in Syria. Not to bounce the Assad regime but to undermine & destroy the Syrian Arab Spring.
In reporting on the Hindutva pogrom against Muslims in Delhi, the National Herald of India reports: “The cause of the violence is believed to be a clash between pro and anti-CAA protesters.” The Gujarat pogrom against Muslims in 2002, when Modi was Chief Minister of the state, was reported in media & went down in history as the ‘Gujarat riots’ & was described as ‘communal conflict’. But in the age of social media, characterizing the pogrom against Muslims in Delhi as riots, communal violence, or a story with two sides won’t be so easy to pull off. Social media makes millions of people witness to events through photos, videos, & on the scene reports. As so many Kashmiris, Indians, & others have pointed out, there is no equality between Hindutva mobs & Muslims who are being hunted, assaulted, killed, torched in their homes & shops, their mosques vandalized.
Hindutva mobs torching homes & shops burned an 85-year-old woman to death in her home. Could Trump & Modi tell us again about those ‘radical Islamic terrorists’ causing such problems in India & Kashmir?
This piece is about Mohammad Zubair, the Muslim man being assaulted by a Hindutva mob in Delhi. The photo, likely to become one of the iconic images of this pogrom, was taken by Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui who the article only identifies as a Reuters photographer.
Siddiqui has won several photojournalism awards, including the Pulitzer with Indian photojournalist Adnan Abidi for their extraordinary coverage of the Rohingya flight from genocide in 2017. Their images from that desperate flight capture the terror & humanity of the refugees without dehumanizing them & are among the most iconic images. Siddiqui, along with Zeba Siddiqui (another award-winning Indian journalist for Reuters), also has extensive coverage of the occupation & lockdown of Kashmir which can be considered sympathetic with the Kashmiri struggle. He has covered the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, the Nepal earthquake, the plight of asylum seekers, poverty in India.
Mohammad Zubair said he ‘can’t bear’ to look at this photo of himself being assaulted. In “No Friend But the Mountains”, Behrouz Boochani complained of the intrusions of photojournalists taking photos of refugees in their most vulnerable moments. That is not an uncommon complaint from the subjects of photojournalism, especially those in crisis situations where their vulnerability is witnessed. But others welcome it as a way to take war & genocide out of the realm of power politics to tell the story & humanize those suffering from war & genocide. This image of Mohammad Zubair is worth a thousand Hindutva lies.
Once we had a lovely discussion on my wall about those dreams you get after a beloved person dies. Their presence is vivid & you feel them as if they were still alive. One of my friends said she thought of them as ‘visitations’ from her beloved father. I’ve been having those visitations from Geraldine Kreitz, my friend on FB & in real life who died just a few weeks ago. I wake up feeling her presence but then when I come on FB I realize that she in fact has really passed away. Those nighttime visitations which so many of you have about your husbands, moms, dads, & other beloved are a blessing. You realize that grief & loss never really go away but time just moves on anyway. The good part is that you keep them in your heart forever until we all meet again on the star we all came from.
Kashmiri friends: a friend who has been invited to a wedding in Kashmir asks if foreigners are being allowed into the country during the lockdown. Is there a preferable way for her to travel if foreigners are allowed? Will she be required to declare fealty to the Hindu gods Modi & Shah?
“Prayers with Muslims of Delhi who are facing Islamophobic Hindutva mobs along with highly communalised police force just because they are demanding the equal citizenship rights, dignity and justice.
Kejriwal is an emerging soft Hindutva icon, so it is futile to expect anything from him apart from passing the buck.
This “both sides” bullshit propounded by some journos is a hypocritical device to deny the elephant in the room: hatred against Muslims has become mainstream in India and is an existential threat to them.
There are stories though of Hindus in some areas protecting their Muslim brothers and taking out joint peace marches which fills one with hope, however bleak, about the future of humanity in this region. More such efforts need to be made and encouraged.
It is not the time of equating victims with aggressors, it is time to stand for the oppressed especially if you belong to the majority community. One hopes and prays that the designs of hate mongers come to naught and humanity lives another day. Aameen.”
–Kashmiri Mir Laieeq
Kashmir brothers & sisters: unlike Trump, we do not see you as a ‘thorn in our sides’. We see your struggle for self-determination as one of the most important in the world, as a struggle that is leading humanity against the barbarisms of our times. We stand with you against Trump & Modi who both impugn you as terrorists & are honored to stand with you until you have triumphed. Which you certainly will.
#history #repeats #itself
#india #caa #muslimgenocide
By Mir Suhail Qadiri