بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Headline News 16/02/2019
Headlines:
India’s Modi under pressure to act in response to Kashmir Strike
US Europe Split over Iran evident at Munich Security Conference
Muslim US Congresswoman Generates Backlash after pointing out Jewish Influence
Details:
India’s Modi under pressure to act in response to Kashmir Strike
According to Business Insider:
Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi on Friday unleashed the country's military against rival Pakistan in response to a terror attack by Muslim separatists that killed 44 on Thursday.
"I know there is deep anger, your blood boils looking at what has happened. At this moment, there are expectations and the feelings of a strong response which is quite natural," Modi said in a speech mourning the police forces killed and those injured.
Following the terror attack, where an explosive-laden truck plowed into a bus carrying police forces, India said it had "incontrovertible evidence" of Pakistan's involvement in the attack. Pakistani-based Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed the attack, but Pakistan quickly denied any official involvement.
"Our neighboring country thinks such terror attacks can weaken us, but their plans will not materialize," said Modi of Pakistan.
"Security forces have been given permission to take decisions about the timing, place and nature of their response," Modi continued.
Rajesh Rajagopalan, a professor of international politic at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, tweeted that Modi's statement was an "abdication of political responsibility," because he handed over control of the response to the military.
It appears that this attack has come at a particularly inconvenient moment for both Pakistan and India. Prime Minister Modi of India, clearly caught unawares and under pressure to respond, does not wish any distractions from his upcoming general elections, in which he faces the very real possibility of losing power to the Congress Party. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan is deeply engaged in servicing the American agenda in Afghanistan and the wider Muslim world, with a key visit by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman this very weekend, to finalise substantial Saudi investment into the Pakistan economy.
In truth, neither India nor Pakistan want to solve the Kashmir issue. The Hindu ruling elite are insistent on retaining the great prize of Kashmir, with its high elevation, strategic location and control over key river sources, while the rulers of Pakistan have largely come to view Kashmir only as a sometimes useful instrument of foreign policy. Talk of normalising India-Pakistan relations over the past two decades in particular has generally assumed sidelining the troubles of Kashmir.
The Muslim land of Kashmir has been occupied by the Hindu State of India since the partition of British-ruled India into the independent countries of Pakistan and India in 1947, despite the total rejection of this occupation by the overwhelming Muslim-majority population that resides there. India was ruled by Muslims for more than seven centuries, rule that brought a high degree of peace, justice and prosperity to all its peoples, the majority of whom were not Muslim. The British, in their far briefer presence as a colonial power only stripped India of its wealth and grandeur, severely impoverishing it and finally tearing it apart at the time of independence, the after effects of which are still experienced today.
The great crises endured by the Muslim Ummah in the age will never be solved until the Ummah is able to retake charge of its own affairs, installing rulers that are sincere to the Ummah and her Deen of Islam, re-establishing the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw), unifying all Islamic lands and liberating its occupied territories from the forces of the foreign disbelievers.
US Europe split over Iran evident at Munich Security Conference
According to the Washington Post:
European officials insisted Friday they would remain committed to the Iran nuclear deal, a day after Vice President Pence demanded that the continent’s major powers follow the United States out of the agreement and accused them of trying to bust U.S. sanctions.
Addressing the Munich Security Conference, where leaders from around the globe began to gather Friday, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini held tough on the continent’s commitment to the Iran deal, saying that the 28-nation bloc regards the agreement as an effective guarantor of peace.
“I believe if it was not for the European Union and its member states, starting with France, Germany and the U.K., I am sure that the nuclear deal with Iran would have been dead long ago,” she said. “We believe it is fundamental and crucial for our security.”
The comments came after Pence used a speech in Warsaw on Thursday to deliver the most direct attack to date from a U.S. official on Europe’s attempts to salvage the agreement. Pence accused European powers of aiding “that vile regime” in Tehran with a new financial platform intended to allow trade with Iran to continue, even as the United States attempts to choke it off.
The blistering Pence speech appeared to have done little to alter the course of Europe’s Iran policy, or even provoke much reaction. Mogherini did not directly mention Pence’s statement, and the E.U. account of a meeting she held with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Brussels earlier on Friday made no mention of the issue.
It was America, under President Obama, that offered Europe the prize of Iranian oil at a time that America desperately needed Iranian ground forces to support American backed regimes in Syria and Iraq. Energy-starved Europe briskly grasped the Iran nuclear deal, providing Iran with sufficient diplomatic acceptance to allow America to use its forces without international opposition. But now that America’s work is done, the Trump administration is loath to continue bribing Europe.
It is the hallmark of the Iranian ruling elite in particular that they think themselves to be highly clever in manipulating international politics in their favour. ‘Revolutionary’ Iran has a long history of covert cooperation with the ‘Great Satan’ America, going back to the Iran Contra scandal of the 1980s. In the present troubles, Iran thought it had a win-win situation: cooperation with America would allow it to entrench its military and political presence in the ‘Shia Crescent’ of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, connecting it to the Mediterranean, while the nuclear deal would restore diplomatic relations along with access to international trade and much needed foreign exchange. But the sad reality is that Iran is manipulated by America every time; in the 1980’s America played a double game using the conflict with Iran to attempt to entrench itself in Iraq, while at this time, America used Iran to the full when it was close to being ejected from Syria and Iraq, and now wishes to throw Iran out like a used tissue. When will Iran’s rulers realise that allying with the disbelieving foreigner always leads to disaster:
[يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ لاَ تَتَّخِذُواْ الْيَهُودَ وَالنَّصَارَى أَوْلِيَاء بَعْضُهُمْ أَوْلِيَاء بَعْضٍ وَمَن يَتَوَلَّهُم مِّنكُمْ فَإِنَّهُ مِنْهُمْ إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الظَّالِمِينَ]
“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you - then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.” [Al-Ma’idah: 51]
Muslim US Congresswoman generates backlash after pointing out Jewish influence
According to an opinion piece in The Nation, by a former employee of AIPAC:
One thing that should be said about Representative Ilhan Omar’s tweet about the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (more commonly known as AIPAC, or the “Israel lobby”) is that the hysterical reaction to it proved her main point: The power of AIPAC over members of Congress is literally awesome, although not in a good way. Has anyone ever seen so many members of Congress, of both parties, running to the microphones and sending out press releases to denounce one first-termer for criticizing the power of… a lobby?
Somehow, I don’t think the reaction would have been the same if she had tweeted that Congress still supports the ethanol subsidy because the American Farm Bureau and other components of the corn/ethanol lobby spend millions to keep this agribusiness bonanza going (which they do). Or that if she had opposed the ethanol subsidy, she would have been accused of hating farmers.
That’s American politics; the only difference between all the domestic lobbies that essentially buy support for their agenda is that AIPAC is working for a foreign government, a distinction but not much of a difference when the goal is to maintain a status quo that is not necessarily in the national interest.
What did Omar tweet that was so terrible, anyway? Actually it was two tweets that produced the unsettling but oh-so-telling coming together of President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in common denunciation of the first-term member of Congress. Omar’s crime: daring to suggest that campaign contributions orchestrated by AIPAC play a large part in achieving bipartisan support for anything proposed by the Israeli government and/or its lobby, AIPAC.
By highlighting Jewish political influence, the Muslim first-time US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has come under attack for antisemitism, despite the fact it is impossible for a Muslim to be accused of this as Arabic, in which the Qur’an is revealed, is one of the Semitic languages. The outsized role of Jewish funding in the American political system is in fact well known, as is the fact that the domestic American Jewish vote was instrumental in US support for the establishment of the Jewish State back in 1948.
This role of the Jewish elite interests is not because of some unique characteristic of the Jewish people but because of the deficient nature of the ‘democratic’ political process, which is actually designed to be beholden to special elite interests operating outside of the system. The Jewish lobby is only one of many such elite interests, and has only been tolerated because of the need of the American establishment to ensure the continuation of the Jewish State as a foreign Western presence in the heartlands of the Muslim Ummah.
Rather than participating in criminal Western political systems thereby acting to legitimise them, sincere Muslims should expose the true reality of democracy and the Western establishments that perpetuate their worldwide hegemony under its cover.