Monthly Archives: July 2021

Some nations and cultures experienced a phase of fundamentalism as they sought to reach a higher level of civilization. This has happened in predominantly Western cultures in all areas of this phase of the history of human civilization.

The problem is that after breaking free from the dark phase, the Western world has had its fluctuating positions towards fundamentalism, and this has also happened in the Arab and Islamic world.

I want to say emphatically in order to clear up any misunderstanding that Islamic fundamentalism has nothing to do with the religion of Islam, just as Jewish or Christian fundamentalism has nothing to do with Judaism or Christianity .

Fundamentalism is a political theory and partisan organizations use religion and exploit its holiness to achieve narrow partisan gains, a disease from which nations rarely recover unless they develop a keen awareness of its danger with the presence of elites and leaders able to confront it and map the way for the future.

The Taliban’s comeback on the Afghan scene is a huge political and historical event, not a passing event. Two decades after the intervention of the most powerful American empire in history with its military might and broad alliances, the movement is once again ready to tighten its grip on the Afghan state, and it is only a matter of time for him to take full control.

The return of the Taliban is very important and significant for those who continue to claim that the “brotherhood” is over or that surrealism is gone. It is also an affirmation that the task of freeing oneself from fundamentalist ideological groups and parties, as well as their ideologies and discourses, concepts and methods is a clear task and must have a global vision, long-term strategic plans and determination. to rid society of the clutches of backwardness, ignorance, extremism and hatred.

In May 2011, I wrote an article titled “The Rise of Fundamentalists and the Age of Fundamentalism”, in which the focus was on the rise of fundamentalism. What is happening today is the return of the Taliban and the return of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic political groups to countries and societies that were supposed to have rejected them but are now exposed to them. in new ways. This strongly underlines that we are still living in the phase of fundamentalism which differs from place to place, but we have not gotten rid of it.

One of the manifestations of the return of the phase of fundamentalism in the countries and societies, individuals and institutions of the Middle East is the bias of the Western liberal left to ally with all the fundamentalists in the region despite the failure of this alliance during what has come to be known as the “Arab Spring”.

What we are seeing today is that negotiations with the fundamentalist Iranian regime are in full swing in Vienna, the Houthi militia in Yemen are being treated with gloves without their terrorist designation, pressure is mounting on the legitimate Yemeni government and its allies to ease the confrontation with fundamentalist terrorist militias, there is leniency in the treatment of fundamentalist “Iranian militias” in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. All of these are glaring indications of the revival of fundamentalism and the return of the fundamentalist era.

In 2013, I wrote a preface to the book “The Storm and the Turban” on Afghanistan and the Taliban, in which I stated: “The book raises many questions about the political and ideological future of the Taliban movement, and if he is able to develop to coexist with the logic of history and the balance of power in the world, or will his old failure soon return after all he has been through? So in the event of a return to power, will he be able to reverse the wheel of history? Can he ignore the major changes that have taken place over the years? These are the questions that meet in this period with many answers.

The sudden and rapid American withdrawal gave the Taliban a strong opportunity to return with force and speed to control the Afghan state, and America began to count China and its calculations of rising power that did not concern it in the same. measure before, and with the invocation that Afghanistan was one of the hottest wars of the Cold War, and which ended in the defeat of the Soviet Union and its disintegration. The American policymaker may find it easy to repeat the same scenario, but with a different enemy this time, and keep Afghanistan like a dagger to the side.

In a report by the British correspondent of “Sky News”, who filmed him as he escorted the Taliban forces, it was revealed that elements of the movement appeared to control a large and modern fleet of armored vehicles, equipment, missiles and weapons left behind by the retreating US military. It was a scene that reminds us of ISIS’s control over Mosul and its acquisition of large quantities of modern American weapons that were left there, to be taken by the terrorist organization and wreaked havoc in Iraq and in Syria over the following years.

Almost all events in Afghanistan point to the return of the Taliban, with the exception of some statements aimed at softening their image in the media at this phase of power transition in the country.

The same old rhetoric and savagery of the past is there and there is no indication of radical changes in terms of ideology or savage politics.

Afghanistan’s strategic depth lies in Pakistan, which in turn does not seem in a rush to express an explicit political position until the dust settles in Afghanistan and the new international power equation emerges.

The relationship of the Taliban and some of its allied forces in Afghanistan with the Iranian regime is well known. The nature of future developments in this relationship is subject to many variables, but they all serve to reinforce the “fundamentalist era” and the path of “drug trafficking” from Afghanistan to Lebanon.

NATO member Turkey has promised America to cover up its swift withdrawal from Afghanistan, and it is under explicit threats from the Taliban to leave the country with its forces and weapons, and it appears that it will not hesitate for long to withdraw from there once things are settled in the hands of the Taliban.

Qatar, the country with the strongest relations with the Taliban and the former Al-Qaeda formation, knowing that America can conduct peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban and has well-known tendencies in which he wishes to invest in the near future.

Some of the video footage that comes out of it is reminiscent of the biography of the first Taliban movement in its dealings with people, women and political parties, which suggests the return of Afghanistan to become a safe haven for all terrorists and fundamentalists around the world. . The Brotherhood group, which is classified as terrorist in several countries, has started to seriously consider moving many of its elements and bodies to Afghanistan.

Finally, it is prudent for Muslim countries to take all precautions against the return of the “fundamentalist era” to become effective, influential and gain support at the international level. Western left-wing rights organizations and media will move to attack these countries when they confront terrorists and fundamentalists.

– Al-Otaibi is a Saudi writer. This article originally appeared in the Al-Sharq Alawsat newspaper.

This is how Tara received the news. On a piece of paper scribbled with spiders: “Father is dead. Call Surjo. The message reached her in this way because she had not replied to the many messages left at the language center the day before.

The woman remained silent and gave him two more pieces of paper. They were as redundant as romance novels are today. “Urgent from New Jersey.” Call. “” We are trying to reach you. Neither does Baba.

She handed him the notes with the same serenity with which she transmitted messages when Tara missed her mother’s calls. Tara has never been special to recall. When she did, her mother had the same questions about money, sweaters, covering her ears while running, eating enough rice.

She rarely called her family from Dharamsala, except to tell them to transfer money or send her books by mail. The woman held Tara’s hands, closed her eyes and said a long prayer. Before Tara could say anything, she turned around and left.

Tara’s first instinct was to watch from her balcony. There was the sky, the pagodas of the Dalai Lama temple towering in the distance, the great deodar spreading its limbs out like men in public buses, the tea stand opposite the road, and even the Pahari cow with colorful beads around the neck that parked there daily.

The bikes chained to a metal railing were not there. It was after nine o’clock now, and they had made their way through other streets and alleys, their fates tied to their owners. The world, with its order and rhythm, was in order. Only his father, older than his world, was gone.

Children, Tara and Surjo laughed when they heard the servants use the word “expire” to designate deceased relatives. Medicines and packaged foods expire. Can a human being finish his goal, literally stop being useful? As a child, she had found this inappropriate use funny. It seemed cruel now.

But death democracy in English seemed unfair. A terrorist could have died in an encounter. A rogue elephant could be shot. And now his father was also just dead. In Indian languages, a common criminal and his father would influence verbs to conjugate differently.

She saw Noor’s braided head float on the road. Should she yell across the road and tell him what had happened? If Noor hadn’t come that morning, she would still have slept and would have completely missed it. None of this would have happened.

No, calling Noor would confirm the case. She looked her in the eyes and put her arms around her and that made her cry. Maybe there had been a mistake. Which father were the notes referring to?

It must be Laura’s father. Poor Laura. She would call and console her. But why would Surjo call him Baba? They only had one Baba. There must be some mistake, but she didn’t know what.

She put on her jacket, hung on a hook near the door last night, and started walking towards the language center. Her alley grocery store, where she bought her bottled water, had a phone. But it was too loud in there.

She should walk to the language center and use the phone there. It was ten minutes away. It would be calm and she could hear Surjo and then they would laugh in confusion. Then his father would rip Surjo’s phone off and say something smart.

The sun had not yet gained strength and Tara’s jacket was flapping around her knees as she walked. She paused to start buttoning it, but her fingers were stiff. Then she realized that it was her feet that were cold. She was wearing flip flops. She should walk fast and be done – what if she ran into Tashi in that mango-print pajama outfit, pom-pom flip flops and a sleek silk jacket?

Still, she made an effort to recognize everyone she usually smiled at on the way to the market. She passed the man at the momo counter in Lung Ta who motioned to his momo pot and seemed to ask him why she hadn’t had dinner with him last night. She nodded to the woman who tried to sell her a silver jewel set with turquoise stones every day. She smiled at the boy who sold cut fruit and at a group of students whom she always saw at the center but who she had never spoken to.

When the center of speech loomed right in front of her, she slowed down. Suddenly she wished she had walked so fast. She was hungry. She hadn’t had breakfast. Why didn’t Noor bring something more useful than oranges?

She turned around and went back to the fruit vendor and asked for a bowl of cut fruit. He gave her pineapple, banana, watermelon and some strawberries on top. She asked for more pineapple slices. It would take a while, she would have to wait for him to cut a new one. She would wait, she said. She buttoned her jacket correctly in the meantime. After she finished eating, she walked back to the center.

The language center looked minimal from the outside. Inside, it was garish. White tubes lit up every flaw. A new round of global grants had made possible, in addition to a library wing, a coffee counter in the lobby. Students usually crowded around this.

But the hall was empty today. The coffee machine was silent, not making its usual noises. It was Christmas vacation and a large number of foreign students had returned home. There were only the monks and her.

A young monk in a crimson robe was making a call, so she stood in line. He still seemed to be on the phone. Weren’t they supposed to give up on the world? Who did he call?

When he finally finished, she wiped the receiver with her sleeve and called Surjo. Laura picked up. She said she was sorry for her loss.

Tara felt like she had been on a roller coaster for the first time. There had been a chill when the ride had started, going straight first and then curving upward in a large semi-circular loop. Baba was next to her in the coupe.

It had always been like this: Baba and her, Ma and Surjo. They were the family teams even when they were playing carrom. She had held his arm through the sleeves of his shirt, her little girl’s nails digging into him. They had reached the top and she had had a glimpse of the whole amusement park – how small people looked!

“And you, Tara rani, you are at the top of the world”, Baba had said. “You and me on top of the world. She and Baba looked at each other, if only for a moment, and shouted. But when the ride passed the loop and began a downward spiral, she was taken by surprise by the feeling of hollow in her stomach. All of his entrails had been dug. She was the skin and the heartbeat. She didn’t know if it was thrill or fear.

“Ekhuni shesh hobe, Tara rani,” she heard her father’s voice say over the collective cries of children and adults. It would be over soon, all she had to do was hold on tight to the railing in front.

Extracted with permission from The Illuminated, Anindita Ghose, HarperCollins India.

This week, an anonymously created open source website called S * lli Deals named for an insult against Muslims went live. It had the photographs, names and social networks of many Muslim women in India, and the obscene suggestion that these people could be bought off, as in any “Deal of the Day” promotion. It was an open invitation to harassment of all kinds.

Women have their photos stolen and abused all the time, especially online. I’ve written in this column in the past about discovering my own reposted images by shady accounts, among hundreds of others. But this latest cybercrime, the latest in a long line, should not be viewed solely in light of global societal misogyny, but should be specifically understood in the context of anti-Muslim hatred. Women have been targeted because of their religious background.

This too joins a long line of similar incidents of varying levels of brutality, ranging from prejudice to genocide. Anti-Muslim and anti-minority rhetoric in India is currently happening very openly and from very high platforms. It is part of the election campaign. Hate speech resonates at large gatherings, such as at the Hindu Mahasabha in Haryana a few days ago, where among other radicalized public speakers, a 17-year-old opened fire near Jamia Millia University during of an anti-CAA protest last year.

Those who openly incite violence against minorities enjoy impunity. Meanwhile, activists who work for equality and justice generally with political secularism, regardless of their personal feeling, as a fundamental value suffer and even die incarcerated (like Father Stan Swamy) or murdered (like Gauri Lankesh, or later, like Deputy Gandhi). The reprehensible term “love jihad” has been used for years to control and punish Hindu women (and now Sikh women too, as recent cases in Kashmir have shown). It is based on the idea of ​​woman as property, an asset which cannot be allowed to exercise free will.

Abusive businesses like S * lli Deals also operate under the concept of ownership, and by extension trade or trafficking, but with two additional levels: inviting the public to participate in oppression and explicit religious discrimination. No religion is exempt from fundamentalists. Regardless of its principles. No matter how meaningful or uplifting a private spiritual life may be, to deny that some will always use religion to create violence of all kinds is to help perpetuate that violence.

People like me who technically belong to the Hindu religious majority are often dismissed in the conversation with versions of the statement: “You don’t know the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism.” I actually do. I have spent most of my life in a Muslim country, 17 years to be precise, with anti-minority decrees enshrined in its constitution.

I have personally experienced the daily discrimination of belonging to a minority and erasing my culture on a systemic scale, and I have raised my voice loud and clear against this abuse there too. None of this made me anti-Muslim. It made me anti-intolerance. I know the dangers of religious fundamentalism on a population in general, period. It does not matter which strains are all equally violent and must be rejected, for the good of all, of all faiths.

SHARANYA MANIVANNAN

@RANYAMANIVANNAN

The columnist is a writer and illustrator

“Vote for us in this election because we lost the last election” may sound like an odd campaign call, but it’s a theme many Republican candidates have embraced for the 2022 midterm.

They wouldn’t phrase it quite that way, of course. In their account, the problem is the pursuit of “electoral integrity” to prevent a repeat of last year’s “stolen” presidential race. In this, they have the backing of former President Donald Trump, who recently warned GOP officials that they would be “promptly removed from office” if they failed to provide “a full forensic investigation” on the 2020 vote. The “electoral integrity” contingent also has strength in numbers: in The Washington PostAccording to the tally, “at least a third” of the nearly 700 GOP candidates who filed documents with the Federal Election Commission to run for Congress next year called President Biden’s victory fraudulent. Of that third, 136 are members of Congress, and historical trends suggest that about nine in ten of them will win their seats again.

The de facto leader of the GOP, much of his lieutenants and (polls show) most of the party base believe in the story of voter fraud. It has become the substance of a new republican fundamentalism, a fundamentalism that presents an arguably unique challenge in American politics because of its public nature and its large membership.

When I say “fundamentalism” here, I mean no religious movement. Rather, I am thinking of an intellectual style that can be found in any context. As Jonathan Rauch wrote in Benevolent Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought Almost three decades ago, this type of fundamentalism was “the strong reluctance to take seriously the idea that you might be wrong”. The distinguishing characteristic of fundamentalists, explained Rauch, is “not the rightness or the fallacy of their beliefs, or even that they firmly believe. It is that they show no interest in verifying.”

This “check” is not a fact check in our current sense, where appointed reporters assess claims and pass judgment on their validity. Rauch has in mind the organic and decentralized process by which widely accepted knowledge is established in a free society, a process that he condenses into two short rules that I will quote in full:

It is the verification that fundamentalism rejects. To believe something in a fundamentalist style – and again, it can be anything, and in fact there are plenty of progressive fundamentalists – is to take it as “necessarily true, and [therefore something which] cannot and does not need to be verified, ”argued Rauch. all believe some things that way. The problem arises when we believe too many things this way, especially relatively unimportant things or matters of public importance where fundamentalism may incline us to authoritarian suppression of inquiry and dissent.

While some of the fiercest supporters in fraud history have openly based their belief on personal sentiment alone, other Republicans who believe the election was stolen may wish to oppose it. “But we do want to verify, “might they protest.” What is Trump’s “full forensic investigation” if not the very “verification” you demand? “

The problem is that accepting this pushback requires ignoring or denying the reality that the verification has already taken place – that the fraud claim has not stood up to attempts at debunking. Dozens of lawsuits by the Trump campaign and its allies have failed, and some of the harshest rejections have come from judges appointed by Trump (an excellent illustration of the verification method giving “the same result regardless of the identity of the verifier ”). Recounts in disputed states like Wisconsin and Georgia confirmed Biden’s victories. The “stolen election” theory has been applied by our normal processes. It has been widely verified, including by people sympathetic to Trump’s cause. It was wrong.

As a society, we can deal with fundamentalism, including in politics. “A society run on liberal intellectual rules takes advantage of its dogmas and true believers by making them argue,” observed Rauch: “You can put fundamentalist raisins in the liberal pie.

But what if you have a parcel raisins? Can the cake hold together? (My colleague Damon Linker has serious doubts.) Rauch’s advice for dealing with “people who have stupid or offensive opinions and who haven’t bothered to submit to the rigors of public scrutiny” was simple: never censor their opinions with state power, but “[i]ignore them ”, because the world will always be“ full of people who have stupid or obnoxious opinions and who have the means to disseminate them ”, and“ the best strategy is to marginalize them unless and until they get out of hand. subject to appropriate control. Ignored, they lose their microphone. “

Do they do so, however, when they reach critical mass? A former president, hundreds of viable candidates for federal office (not to mention state races, where considerable control over electoral process resides) and tens of millions of voters are not easily marginalized. The fraud claim is false and fundamentalist, but it is not marginal. I’m not convinced that giving this fundamentalism the silent treatment would silence it – especially not in the age of social media, which Rauch’s book preceded. I’m not sure which strategy is best here, but I’m inclined to say that we should continue to explain, in good faith, how many checks have already happened to anyone who genuinely seems to ignore it.

At the same time, however, this strategic issue remains somewhat abstract. Most Republicans, including those who believe in the fraud story, don’t want their party to prioritize “support.[ing] allegations of electoral fraud of 2020. ”The stolen election claim could become a partisan mythology (and a fundraising tic) more than a political platform, which would make it no less fundamentalist but certainly less public. At this point, it might be safe to ignore.