Archives for October 2014

Delhi Jama Masjid's Shahi Imam attacked

October 26, 2014 by Nasheman

New Delhi: The Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, was attacked by a 32-year-old man who tried to set him ablaze during Sunday evening prayers, police and witnesses said. The accused, said to be mentally unstable, was arrested.

The incident took place at the Jama Masjid when the man approached the Shahi Imam while the latter was praying, poured kerosene on him and tried to set him ablaze, younger brother Tariq Bukhari told IANS.

But the attacker failed to harm the Shahi Imam, one of the best known Muslim clerics in the country.

“The Shahi Imam did not receive any external injury,” Tariq Bukhari said.

“The man was later caught by the Imam’s security personnel and others who were praying. He was handed over to police,” he said.

He was identified as Kamaluddin alias Kamal, a resident of North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal.

Kamaluddin was taken into police custody but officials were yet to decide the charges under which he should be booked.

“Kamaluddin is believed to be mentally unstable. He poured kerosene on the Shahi Imam and tried to set him on fire with a cigarette lighter,” Joint Commissioner of Police Sandeep Goel told IANS.

“If the Shahi Imam files a complaint against the man, he might be booked for attempt to murder,” he said.

Apart from a lighter, a box of matchsticks was also found in Kamaluddin’s pocket, police said.

Police said there was chaos when the attack took place because hundreds of people were praying in the sprawling redstone mosque, but the situation turned normal very soon.

Asked why the Shahi Imam was targeted, Goel said: “The man is mentally unfit, not mad.”

Additional Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar told IANS: “He told police that he travelled by train and reached Delhi yesterday (Saturday). He wanted to meet the Imam. When he failed to meet him despite several attempts, he attacked him.”

The man was being questioned late Sunday.

“We are trying to find out the reason why he wanted to meet the Imam,” the official said. “At the time of the attack, the accused was alone.”

The Shahi Imam was also attacked by another mentally disturbed person last year during Friday afternoon prayers. The man had attacked him with a paper cutter. He too was overpowered and arrested.

The 17th century Jama Masjid, reputedly India’s largest mosque, is located across the Red Fort.

(IANS)

Israeli president’s diagnosis – ‘Israel is a sick society’

October 25, 2014 by Nasheman

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said: the time has come to admit that Israel is a sick society, with an illness that demands treatment. [Photo: Haaretz]

by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss

Did you hear that the president of Israel said Israel is a “sick society”? Reuven Rivlin, a Likudnik, said this over the weekend. There’s been lots of coverage in Israel, but as Sullivan points out, the declaration hasn’t gotten much attention stateside. I should think it would be viral.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s report:

“It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is ill – and it is our duty to treat this disease,” Rivlin told the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities on Sunday at a conference titled “From Xenophobia to Accepting the Other.”

“The tension between Jews and Arabs within the State of Israel has risen to record heights, and the relationship between all parties has reached a new low,” he said. “We have all witnessed the shocking sequence of incidents and violence taking place by both sides. The epidemic of violence is not limited to one sector or another, it permeates every area and doesn’t skip any arena. There is violence in soccer stadiums as well as in the academia. There is violence in the social media and in everyday discourse, in hospitals and in schools.”

From the Jerusalem Post:

The time has come to admit that Israel is a sick society, with an illness that demands treatment, President Reuven Rivlin said at the opening session on Sunday of a conference on From Hatred of the Stranger to Acceptance of the Other.

Rivlin wondered aloud whether Jews and Arabs had abandoned the secret of dialogue.

With regard to Jews he said: “I’m not asking if they’ve forgotten how to be Jews, but if they’ve forgotten how to be decent human beings. Have they forgotten how to converse?” In Rivlin’s eyes, the academy has a vital task to reduce violence in Israeli society by encouraging dialogue and the study of different cultures and languages with the aim of promoting mutual understanding, so that there can be civilized meetings between the sectors of society.

JTA says that Rivlin spoke of abuse he’s received on his Facebook page. Presumably from the right, not the left. This is a country where a settler extremist assassinated a prime minister who was saying he wanted to compromise with Palestinians, 19 years ago.

Rivlin is obviously referencing the teen murders of the last summer and the chants of “Death to Arabs” that resound in the streets of Jerusalem. This is the hardline rightwing society that Max Blumenthal described in his book Goliath, that Shlomo Sand has sought to resign from by stopping being a Jew, and that Nathan Thrall cites in his takedown of Ari Shavit’s usefulness to American Jews as a liberal voice when he’s anything but. And the president of the country is saying this? A Likudnik politician? As Sulllivan says, any American who said this would be instantly marginalized and smeared as an anti-Semite. Witness Blumenthal’s blacklisting by the Times, and the fact that Sand and Thrall appear in English publications. While liberal American Jews hold on to their dreamcastle Israel, with the help of Shavit and his media posse; and the New York Times gives a platform to wingnut Caroline Glick to malign Palestinian leaders. This is a very dangerous situation. Though I imagine if there’s enough controversy over the comments, The New York Times will cover them. Chris Matthews has surely seen Rivlin’s comment but won’t touch it until safe media here have picked it up.

By the way, in a radio discussion on Open Source a month ago, I said that Zionism began in 1894 with Theodor Herzl hearing the chant, Death to the Jews, in Paris, and that it has now culminated 120 years later with nationalist Jews chanting Death to the Arabs in Jerusalem. That is the alpha and omega of political Zionism, which has failed Herzl’s own test, that the stranger will be welcome in Jewish society. Bernard Avishai responded that I was offering a “caricature” of the movement. I don’t think it’s a caricature; it’s a realistic interpretation of the failure of an ideology to create a better society. Rivlin must share something of my view, despairingly. Does he have the makings of a De Klerk, the ability to state to his fellow citizens that the project has failed and must be reimagined?

'Google grown big & bad': Julian Assange reveals company & its founder's links to U.S govt

October 25, 2014 by Nasheman

by RT

One of the world’s largest internet companies, Google ‘should be a serious concern’ internationally, WikiLeaks co-founder and Editor-in-chief Julian Assange says, revealing its connections and donations to the White House.

“Google is steadily becoming the Internet for many people. Its influence on the choices and behavior of the totality of individual human beings translates to real power to influence the course of history,” Assange writes in his article, an extract from which is published in Newsweek.

Based on Assange’s personal encounter with Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt, the story of the corporation’s connections with the US government is intertwined with Schmidt’s personality.

Graduating with a degree in engineering from Princeton, Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems, a company that sold computers and software, in 1983, and over the years had become part of its executive leadership.

“Sun had significant contracts with the US government, but it was not until he was in Utah as CEO of Novell that records show Schmidt strategically engaging Washington’s overt political class,” Assange writes.

Referring to federal campaign finance records, Assange says “two lots of $1,000” to a Utah senator in 1999 was the future Google CEO’s first donation, with “over a dozen other politicians and PACs, including Al Gore, George W. Bush, Dianne Feinstein, and Hillary Clinton…on the Schmidt’s payroll” in the following years.

Ahead of his interview with Google executive chairman in 2011, Assange was “too eager to see a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast,” but says Schmidt “who pays regular visits to the White House” is not the type.

When visiting Assange, who was living under house arrest in England at the time, to quiz him “on the organizational and technological underpinnings of WikiLeaks,” Eric Schmidt was accompanied by Jared Cohen, the Director of Google Ideas, who also works for the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank specializing in US foreign policy.

While describing Schmidt’s politics as “surprisingly conventional, even banal,” Assange says the man behind Google “was at his best when he was speaking (perhaps without realizing it) as an engineer.”

Talking about Cohen, the WikiLeaks co-founder names him “Google’s director of regime change.”

According to Assange’s research, “he was trying to plant his fingerprints on some of the major historical events in the contemporary Middle East,” including his interference with US politics in Afghanistan and Lebanon.

“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has,” Assange says, providing not only data on its direct connections with the White House, but also remembering the PRISM program scandal, when the company was “caught red-handed making petabytes of personal data available to the US intelligence community.”

Google is “luring people into its services trap,” and “if the future of the Internet is to be Google, that should be of serious concern to people all over the world,” Assange concludes.

Iran hangs woman despite international uproar

October 25, 2014 by Nasheman

Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged on Saturday for killing a man she says tried to abuse her, despite international outcry.

– by Al Jazeera

Iran has executed a 26-year-old woman convicted for killing a man whom she said tried to sexually abuse her.

Reyhaneh Jabbari was arrested in 2007 for the murder of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.

She was hanged at dawn on Saturday, the official IRNA news agency quoted the Tehran prosecutor’s office as saying

A message posted on the homepage of a Facebook campaign that was set up to try to save her, but which now states “Rest in Peace,” appeared to confirm the report.

Efforts for clemency had intensified in recent weeks. Jabbari’s mother was allowed to visit her for one hour on Friday, Amnesty said, a custom that tends to precede executions in Iran.

Jabbari was sentenced to death by a criminal court in Tehran in 2009 in what Amnesty International said was a “deeply flawed investigation and trial”.

Her execution was due to be carried out on 30 September but was postponed for 10 days.

A UN human rights monitor had said the killing of Sarbandi was an act of self-defence after he tried to sexually assault Jabbari, and that her trial in 2009 had been deeply flawed.

Iranian actors and other prominent figures had appealed for a stay of execution, echoing similar calls in the West.

Jabbari apparently admitted to stabbing Sarbandi in the back. She said he had tried to sexually assault her.

However, she said that another man who was also in the house at the time killed him. Her claims do not appear to have ever been properly investigated, Amnesty said.

Calls for retrial

The UN and international rights groups had said Jabbari’s confession was obtained under intense pressure and threats from Iranian prosecutors, and she should have had a retrial.

Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s human rights rapporteur on Iran, said in April that Sarbandi had offered to hire Jabbari to redesign his office and took her to an apartment where he sexually abused her.

However, Sarbandi’s family insists that the murder was premeditated and that Jabbari had confessed to buying a knife two days before the killing.

Iran’s judicial authorities were reported to have pressured Jabbari to replace her lawyer, Mohammad Ali Jedari Foroughi, for a more inexperienced one, in an apparent attempt to prevent an investigation of her claims, Amnesty reported.

Hyderabad youth denies involvement in alleged SIMI activists' case

October 25, 2014 by Nasheman

Hyderabad: Maulana Abdul Aleem Islahi has denied charges by Hyderabad Police that his son Mohtasim Billah motivated and was helping two allged SIMI activists from Maharashtra to go to Afghanistan for Jihad training.

Maulana Islahi told reporters Friday that after failing in its previous attempts, police is again trying to implicate his son in false cases. He said the police is targeting his son repeatedly ever since Mohtasim’s brother Mujahid was shot dead by Gujarat IPS officer Narender Amin near the Andhra Pradesh DGP’s office in Hyderabad in 2004.

“From that time onwards, when Mohtasim was not even 16, police has filed several cases. But he was acquitted in all cases. Only two cases are left. The judgment in one of them is coming this month-end. It appears they want to keep up the pressure,” he told media.

“They killed my elder son in cold blood and they are now targeting my younger son.”

In 2004, Billah’s brother Mujahid Saleem was killed when a team of Gujarat Police opened fire in Hyderabad as he tried to resist their attempts to arrest Maulana Naseeruddin, a renowned Islamic scholar in Hyderabad, who was arrested and later acquitted of all terror charges on January 12, 2010, after being poisoned for more than five years he in a Gujarat jail.

Mohtasim also claimed that he is innocent. He alleged that police were trying to frame false charges against him.

”I am going to college and signing every month in court records for previous cases filed against me. How can they say I am absconding?” asked 24-year-old Mohtasim, who is a M.Tech student.

“I don’t even have money to pay my college fee, and the police says I offered to finance them.” he said.

Police Wednesday arrested two youth on their arrival in Hyderabad from Maharashtra.

It claimed that Mohtasim had motivated them during their visit to the city last month to go to Afghanistan to get training from the Al Qaeda in order to wage jihad in India to establish an Islamic State.

Mohtasim had even offered financial support to the duo for visa processing, police said.

Shah Mudassir alias Talha (25) and Shoaib Ahmed Khan alias Pusad Shoaib (24), both residents of Maharashtra, are said to be members of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

According to police, the SIMI activists through social networks came in contact with two citizens of Pakistan and one of Afghanistan.

Police have not yet arrested Mohtasim. Police Commissioner Mahender Reddy Friday told reporters that they are seeking custody of the two accused for further questioning.

The police chief refused to comment on Maulana Islahi’s allegations.

“The investigations are on and on the basis of evidence we will take action. We will conduct investigations with open mind. Till proved otherwise every person is innocent. We will go very very professionally in the investigations,” he said.

“We will not arrest anybody if there is no or insufficient evidence. Once the evidence is there, we will not hesitate to arrest anyone,” said the commissioner.

The top cop said it would be difficult at this stage to say who else are involved in the case.

With inputs from IANS

Godse should have targeted Nehru: RSS mouthpiece "Kesari"

October 25, 2014 by Nasheman

Thiruvananthapuram: An article that appeared in RSS mouthpiece “Kesari” on October 17 has indirectly suggested that Nathuram Vinayak Godse should have killed Jawahar Lal Nehru and not Mahatma Gandhi.

The article written by B Gopalakrishnan, who was the BJP candidate in Chalakudy Lok Sabha constituency, argued that the selfishness of Nehru was the reason for all major national tragedies including partition and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. “If history students honestly verified the historical facts before partition and also the views of Godse, they may arrive at the conclusion that Godse had chosen the wrong target,’’ the article said.

He claims that, Nehru ‘killed Gandhi psychologically’ and effectively cut him out of talks with the British during partition. He says that Godse was a better person than Nehru. His argument is that Nehru stabbed Gandhi in the back whereas Godse pulled the trigger after a “respectful bow”. So the author says, “If history students feel Godse aimed at the wrong target, they cannot be blamed. Nehru was solely responsible for the partition of the country.”

Congress leaders have strongly opposed the article. Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala has directed state police to inspect if action can be taken against the magazine.

Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee President VM Sudheeran criticized the RSS and BJP and said in a statement that the article distorts facts and history. “After the Modi Government came to power, consistent attempts are being made to glorify hardcore Hindutva ideologues and Gandhiji’s killer Nathuram Godse. It also displays the intolerance of Modi towards Nehru and his family,’’ Sudheeran told the media.

Condemning the attack on the former prime minister, Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Friday called it disgusting and reprehensible. “It is painful that RSS ideologue such as this, has spoken something disgusting and reprehensible. It is time that people understand the true face of the RSS and the BJP. It is even more unfortunate that backers of such people are in power,” said Singhvi.

The article comes close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to reconstitute the organising committee for the 125 birth anniversary celebration of Nehru.

Changes to labour laws will make jobs more insecure: Workers Solidarity Centre (WSC), Gurgaon

October 25, 2014 by Nasheman

by Workers Solidarity Centre

Gurgaon: Workers Solidarity Centre (WSC), Gurgaon organized a Protest Program and March against pro-capitalist anti- worker changes in labour laws in Gurgaon this morning. Along with members of Workers Solidarity Centre Gurgaon, Union representatives from various Workers Unions in the industrial belt participated with a pledge to fight these ‘reforms’ brought by the Naredra Modi government which re-enforce already existing regime of exploitation and repression under which workers here and everywhere are forced to work and live everyday.

We had a PROTEST SABHA at 10am at Kamla Nehru Park, and then Marched through Gurgaon city to the Mini Secretariat, where we handed a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner, Gurgaon to be sent to Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India. The delegation comprised of Ramniwas, President of WSC; Bhimrao, Gen.Sec. of Hero MotoCorp Union; Sanjay, Gen. Sec of Maruti Suzuki Workers Union Manesar; Satpal, President of Nerolac Paints Union and Chief Patron of WSC, Nandan Bhandari, Gen Sec of Autofit Workers Union and Joint Secretary of WSC, Rajesh, President of MUKU Gurgaon and Working President WSC, Anil, Secretary of AITUC Gurgaon, Pal Singh, President of Jan Sangharsh Manch Haryana and Brahmanand of Munjal Kiriu Employees Union.

All the participants and speakers were unanimous in their view that the present proposed labour law reforms are a direct brutal attack on workers rights and will only increase the exploitation by capitalists from the country and multinationals. Rajpal from WSC said, “Today ‘acche din’ is only for capitalists, while for us workers it is ‘andhera daur’, and attack on our basic Trade Union rights. Apart from conditions of workers of organized sector comprising mainly of contract workers, casuals and now apprentices with sub-minimum wage, millions of workers in the unorganized sector are facing an increasing insecure future.”

Union representatives from Maruti Suzuki Workers Union -Manesar, Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union -Gurgaon, Maruti Suzuki Powertrain India Employees Union – Manesar, Suzuki Motorcycles India Employees Union – Gurgaon, Nerolac Paints Karamchari Union- Bawal, Autofit Workers Union -Dharuhera, Sunbeam Workers Union -Gurgaon, Hero MotoCorp Employees Union -Gurgaon, Munjal Kiriu Employees Union -Manesar, Endurance Employees Union – Manesar, Belsonica Workers Union – Manesar, AITUC Gurgaon, as well as struggling workers from these and various factories, and representatives from mass organisations like Jan Sangharsh Manch Haryana and Krantikari Naujawan Sabha participated in the rally.

Speakers said that the few pro-worker labour laws have come out of workers struggles in the past. As they presently exist, labour laws are only there for name-sake and their violation is a norm for capitalists. The present ‘reforms’ brought in by the Modi-government will effect a further erosion in workers rights and suck the last drops of blood. The Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal-Bhiwadi industrial area situated in the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, forms the core area of the developmental model in India being projected for the grand ‘Make in India’ project. But here workers find their life-blood sucked everyday on the assembly line and outside. Any voice for workers minimum rights and demand of Union recognition or organized struggle are ruthlessly suppressed. Apart from the inhuman working conditions, violation of trade union rights by anti-worker managements is the rule.

The President, General Secretary and three other Union representatives of Hero MotoCorp Gurgaon have been terminated from their jobs recently for alleged ‘indiscipline’. Munjal Kiriu workers in IMT Manesar are on strike in front of the factory gate for the last one month with the demand of taking their suspended Union representatives back on duty. The President and Vice President of Autofit factory in Dharuhera still remain suspended for asking for workers rights in the factory. Workers at POSCO IDPC in Bawal, Rewari are on strike for more than 5 months for their Union rights. Due to pending settlement, workers at Omax Dharuhera and at Suzuki Motorcycles Gurgaon have refused to receive their ‘Diwali gifts’. 46 workers at Belsonica in Manesar have been suspended in the factory for the audacity to have asked for Right to Union formation. All through the belt, workers strikes and unrest is raging in Talbrose and Minda Furukawa in Bawal, Jay Ushin, Baxter and Autoliv in IMT Manesar, and Shriram Piston in Bhiwadi to name only a few instances.

It is in this situation of exploitation and repression on workers struggle, the participants in the Rally today said, comes the proposed changes in labour laws. These will only decrease the real wage, increase contractualisation and make jobs more insecure, thereby adversely affecting access to basic needs of food, health and education.

Workers Solidarity Centre, Gurgaon strengthened by today’s Protest program, pledged to take the struggle forward through building larger unity of struggling workers, Unions and pro-worker forces in this entire industrial belt.

Indian expat duped by recruitment agency, killed by coworker in Saudi Arabia

October 24, 2014 by Nasheman

by Irfan Mohammed, Arab News

Jeddah: An Indian expat was killed by a fellow worker in the Northern Borders region in a dispute over the grazing of sheep.

According to the victim’s family, Naushad Fakaria came to work as a driver but discovered that he would have to work as a shepherd in the arid desert near the regional capital, Arar.

They allege he was duped into doing the job of a shepherd and was later murdered.

Northern Borders Police spokesman Col. Awayed Bin Mahdi Al Enzi has confirmed the killing. “Police investigations have revealed that an Indian shepherd was murdered by another shepherd of Arab origin 50 km from Arar,” Al Enzi said. He added that initially the Syrian accused said he had found a person dead in the middle of the road probably due to a road accident. However, he later confessed to the murder.

Naushad Fakaria

Naushad hailed from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh and is a father of three children aged 3 to 7. He was recruited by a manpower agency in Jaipur, Rajasthan. According to a police report, Naushad was murdered on Aug. 29.

He had brought a mobile phone from India but it was confiscated by the employer. He was also barred from calling home, family sources said.

However, he was able to make a call to India apparently using the Syrian’s mobile and had informed his family that he had been assigned to graze sheep instead of working as a car driver. He had also told them of the nonpayment of salary and that he was desperate to return home, sources added.

“Since then, Naushad’s wife had tried almost everyday to call her husband back on the Syrian shepherd’s number but was unable to get through,” they said.

According to a family friend, Riad Ali, Naushad had been trying to return home but suddenly the family heard news of his death. “We have been approaching the Indian Embassy but are unable to get any information. Later, I flew to Arar myself to find out about the circumstances related to the incident,” Ali who is based in Jeddah said.

Quoting a medical report issued by the Arar Central Hospital, Ali said: “Naushad was brutally murdered with multiple injuries to his neck, shoulder, back, chest and ears.” He added that the deceased had also had his arms broken.

Ali said the police in Arar are being very helpful in completing the legal procedures. “They also informed us that the murderer has been arrested and is in jail,” he said.

Modi won’t visit any flood-hit area in Kashmir

October 23, 2014 by Nasheman

In this October 18, 2014 photo, protestors hold placards at Lal Chowk in Srinagar demanding Prime Minister Naredndra Modi’s intervention for rehabilitation of the Kashmir flood victims. Photo: PTI

Srinagar: Though Narendra Modi had said he would spend his time in Srinagar; ““sit and sip tea” in a relief camp as a gesture of solidarity with the flood victims on the occasion of Diwali” as reported earlier, however, according to details provided by local BJP leaders, the Prime Minister would hold indoor interaction only with some delegations.

“Modi Ji will interact with delegations of almost all political parties apart from civil society, traders, hoteliers and flood-affected people either at Raj Bhawan or SKICC. He is not scheduled to visit any flood-hit area in Srinagar,” BJP’s Valley-based leader Fayaz Ahmad Bhat told Kashmir Reader on Wednesday.

Modi arrived on Thursday afternoon in summer capital Srinagar after visiting troops at the Siachen glacier, the world’s highest battlefield in Ladakh region.

Modi was received in Srinagar by state Governor N N Vohra, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, senior civil personnel, police and security force officers at the airport.

“He will hold a meeting with army as well. The purpose of that meeting is to appreciate the role of army in rescue operation during the floods. On the evening, he will return to New Delhi,” Bhat said.

On Tuesday, Modi had announced on his Twitter handle that he is coming to Kashmir on Diwali to spend the day with flood-hit people. Both ruling National Conference and opposition PDP appreciated his “gesture” of coming here on this occasion. However, two factions of Hurriyat Conferences have called for a shutdown on Thursday and holding of peaceful protests against the visit.

Chairman Hurriyat Conference(M) Mirwaiz Umar Farooq Wednesday dismissed Indian Prime Minister Narednra Modi’s visit Kashmir on Diwali as a mere “publicity stunt.

Mirwaiz, during his visit to flood-hit areas, said “the theatrics of false mourning and tears were a hollow show of sympathy over the hardships faced by the flood-hit Kashmiris.”

He said that people were immensely suffering due to floods since past two months, rendered homeless, and had nothing to left to fend their families.

Security has been beefed up across Kashmir ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the valley on Thursday.

Police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in strength and are conducting random checking of vehicles. Special checking points have been set up at various places in the city including entry and exit points as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order.

This is Modi’s fourth visit to Jammu and Kashmir since taking charge as Prime Minister in May.

Israel to vote on partitioning Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews

October 23, 2014 by Nasheman

It is important to note that both Rabbinical and Israeli law currently bans Jews from prayer at Al-Aqsa Mosque because of the sanctity of the site for the Jewish religion.

An Arab Knesset member has revealed that there will be a vote in the next month on a law drafted by an Israeli committee regarding the partition of Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews.

Arab MK Masoud Ghanayim was quoted on Monday by Palestinian newspaper Felesteen as saying that “the draft law, which has been prepared by the interior parliamentary committee in the Knesset, stipulates that Jews can perform prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

He continued: “This is based on a proposal that gives Muslims and Jews equal rights in their access and use of the holy site. It also specifies certain locations where Jews can perform their prayers.”

It is important to note that both Rabbinical and Israeli law currently bans Jews from prayer at Al-Aqsa Mosque because of the sanctity of the site for the Jewish religion. Most Jews who lobby to pray there are illegal settlers with a right wing agenda.

The Old City in Jerusalem where Al-Aqsa is located is internationally recognised as occupied land. The Israeli occupation authorities frequently prevent Muslims from praying there.

According to Ghanayim, the same draft law also bans organising civil protests and demonstrations in Al-Aqsa compound, and sets out punishment for any violations.

Ghanayim said that putting such a law for any vote is a “flagrant aggression on the religious rights of Muslims around the world.” He also called it part of the Judaisation plan for the city of Jerusalem.

Commenting on the basis of this law, Ghanayim said it “is solely based on a legitimacy built on historical and religious myths bolstered with the power of the oppressive occupation.”

He stressed that Al-Aqsa Mosque is part of the Islamic and Arabic world and cannot be partitioned at any time or place. He reiterated: “It is part of Arab and Palestinian lands, which is occupied by the Zionists and the [illegal] occupation does not have the right to impose its laws.”

At the same time, he insisted that the Israeli government is behind all the attempts by the extremist right wing settlers to extend Israeli sovereignty over Al-Aqsa Mosque and warned that the Israeli government would pay the price for this aggression on the rights of Arabs and Muslims.

Delhi Jama Masjid's Shahi Imam attacked

Israeli president’s diagnosis – ‘Israel is a sick society’

'Google grown big & bad': Julian Assange reveals company & its founder's links to U.S govt

Iran hangs woman despite international uproar

Hyderabad youth denies involvement in alleged SIMI activists' case

Godse should have targeted Nehru: RSS mouthpiece "Kesari"

Changes to labour laws will make jobs more insecure: Workers Solidarity Centre (WSC), Gurgaon

Indian expat duped by recruitment agency, killed by coworker in Saudi Arabia

Modi won’t visit any flood-hit area in Kashmir

Israel to vote on partitioning Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews

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