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No jobs for Muslims, says Modi govt’s Ayush Ministry; Naik denies report

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ayush-ministry

New Delhi: Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre does not recruit Muslims in the Ayush ministry as a policy, a news report said quoting an official RTI reply.

The report by the Milli Gazette, an influential fortnightly newspaper highlighting issues of the minority community, could give the Opposition more ammo to target the Modi govt which it accuses of running an agenda of turning India into a “Hindu rashtra”.

Sripad Naik, the minister in charge of Ayush, condemned the report as being “false”, and said that it was “an attempt to defame us.” However Mr Naik did not produce any proof for his claim.

The admission by the ministry – formed to promote ayurveda, yoga, naturopathy, unani, siddha and homeopathy – came in response to a series of RTI applications by journalist Pushp Sharma who had sought the number of Muslim yoga teachers and trainers hired for foreign assignments during the first World Yoga Day on June 21, 2015.

“As per government policy – No Muslim candidate was invited, selected or sent abroad,” the ministry was quoted as saying. The online version of the Milli Gazette report also carried images of the RTI replies.

The ministry said, a total of 711 Muslim yoga trainers had applied for the short-term assignment abroad but none was even called for an interview while 26 trainers (all Hindus) were sent abroad on this assignment.

The reply also revealed that 3841 Muslim candidates applied till October 2015 for the post of Yoga trainer/teacher with the Ministry but none was selected.

After the United Nations declared June 21 as the World Yoga Day, Modi said that the recognition was proof that “the world is curious to know about India and we must tell the world about our culture, we have to be proud of our culture.”

(Agencies)

16 arrested after Muslim cop was beaten, forced to hoist saffron flag in Latur

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Latur: Sixteen people have been arrested so far on charges of assaulting two policemen who last week stopped locals from hoisting a “saffron flag” in a communally sensitive area in Latur district, police said today.

A mob had allegedly beaten up Assistant Sub-Inspector Yunus Shaikh (57) and manhandled his colleague K Awaskar when they prevented them from putting up the flag at a controversial spot in Pangaon village.

Shaikh was hospitalised following the assault.

The 12000-strong population of Pangaon village consists of Marathas, Dalits, Reddys and Muslims among others.

On the night of February 19, Shaikh and Awaskar allegedly stopped a group of local youths from erecting the flag in the “sensitive” area. The group included Marathas and other Hindus celebrating Shivaji Jayanti, police said.

Awaskar and Shaikh, both on duty at Pangaon police chowki, reached the spot and asked the youth to leave. They told them that hoisting the flag could lead to communal clashes, a police official said.

At 9 AM on Saturday, a mob of around 200-300 people from the village, including the youths, showed up at the police chowki.

“They (youths) had incited the mob by telling them that the two policemen had crushed their flags under their feet,” the official said.

The mob then allegedly began to attack the duo with fists and lathis. The ASI and his colleague suffered head injuries, but Shaikh was hit worse and was hospitalised.

A video of the purported attack, which has gone viral, shows Shaikh being made to parade a street with the saffron flag by the mob.

(PTI)

Australia considers strict screening of Muslim refugees

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Controversial leaked document proposes new assessments for 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees to stop “extremism”.

Australia said last year that it would accept 12,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq, in addition to its regular intake [Bilal Hussein/AP]

Australia said last year that it would accept 12,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq, in addition to its regular intake [Bilal Hussein/AP]

by Al Jazeera

A leaked government document calling for enhanced screening of Australia’s humanitarian refugee intake from Syria and Iraq has attracted widespread criticism from opposition parties and members of the Lebanese community, who were singled out as being prone to “extremism”.

The sensitive Cabinet document, which was leaked to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Thursday, recommends that the government applies “additional screening criteria” to 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees who are set to resettle in Australia as part of the country’s response to the refugee crisis in the Middle East.

“It is expected that some refugees from this conflict will bring with them issues, beliefs or associations that lead them to advocate or engage in politically motivated or communal violence,” the leaked document said, explaining why additional screening was required.

“This new framework will introduce … an enforceable integration framework to assess migrants’ suitability for life in Australia, a revamped citizenship test and citizenship pledge to strengthen [refugees’] accountability … and enhanced access, use and protection of sensitive information to strengthen intelligence-led risk-based decision-making [when assessing refugees],” the document said.

Prepared by the Department of Immigration, the draft document also recommended that enhanced screening processes should be extended to other areas of the humanitarian resettlement programme, on a “risk basis”.

Australia announced in September that it would accept 12,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq, in addition to its 2015 humanitarian intake of 13,750 refugees.

So far, only 20 Syrian refugees have been resettled under the programme.

Both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Friday they have not read the leaked document.

“I can just say that we will continue as a government to ensure that we do everything we can to keep Australians safe at home … and we will do everything we can to ensure that we maintain control of our borders,” Turnbull told Adelaide’s 5AA radio station.

The opposition Labor Party’s immigration spokesman Richard Marles said the proposals were an “enormously regressive step”.

“This verges dangerously down the path of putting in place a discriminatory immigration policy,” he told the ABC. “If this is where the government wants to take us, we are returning to a very dark past indeed.”

The smaller opposition Greens party went further, with Senator Sarah Hanson-Young saying the leaked document was a “direct attack on people seeking asylum and … designed to stop them from permanently resettling in Australia”.

While not the focus of the new recommendations, the document also riled members of Australia’s large Lebanese community, who were singled out as evidence of why the government should adopt tougher screening standards.

“The most prominent ethnic group among Australian Sunni extremists are the Lebanese,” the document said.

“The majority of this cohort can be linked to the wave of humanitarian migration to Australia as a result of the Lebanese civil war.”

Australia’s Lebanese Muslim Association issued a statement on Friday rejecting the accusations, saying the leaked document “further isolates and vilifies the Muslim community”.

“These accusations do nothing more than fuel division within communities and create obstacles to community cohesion,” said Samier Dandan, the association’s president.

Karnataka: Highest sex ratio among Christians; Muslims overtake Hindus in literacy

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Bengaluru: Christians continued to record the highest sex ratio with the figure increasing from 1,030 in the 2001 Census to 1,049 in the 2011 Census. Although the child sex ratio was also high among Christians in the State, the growth was very marginal and it rose from 961 in 2001 census to 962 in 2011.

 

Economist Sangeeta Kattimani, who compiled these data from the two Census reports and the Religion Data of the Census 2011 released now, said that the lowest sex ratio of 739 was reported among Buddhists.

In fact, the sex ratio among Buddhists had seen a steep fall from 907 in the 2001 Census to 739 in the 2011 Census. The child sex ratio among Buddhists decreased from 953 in 2001 to 949 in 2011.

Prof. Kattimani said that the sex ratio of other major religious groups, including Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains, showed a marginal improvement when compared to the 2001 and 2011 census and same was the case under the child sex ratio head. While the sex ratio of Hindus rose from 966 in 2001 to 972 in 2011, the sex ratio of Muslims rose from 957 in 2001 to 969 in 2011.

There was a marked improvement in the sex ratio of Sikhs — from 739 in 2001 to 803 in 2011 census. The sex ratio of Jains rose from 926 in 2001 to 951 in 2011.

The child sex ratio of Hindus saw a marginal increase from 945 in 2001 to 947 in 2011. Among Muslims, it was 945 in 2001 and 947 in 2011.

The child sex ratio of Sikhs saw an increase from 882 in 2001 to 913 in 2011. Similarly, the child sex ratio of Jains rose from 882 in 2001 to 913 in 2011. Prof. Kattimani said that the latest figures released by the Registrar General of Census provided some interesting data of literacy levels of different religious groups. While the literacy rate of Christians and Jains, who always placed education as a priority in their life, was high, the literacy level of Muslims was higher than Hindus in the State.

As much as 90.80 per cent of Christians were literate and it was 88.32 per cent among Jains in the State.

Surprisingly, a higher number of Muslims were literate when compared to Hindus in the State. The literacy percentage of Hindus was 74.36 per cent as per the 2011 census figures while it was 78.89 per cent among Muslims in the State.

Prof. Kattimani said that the literacy rate of Buddhists saw a record increase from 53.16 per cent in 2001 census to 76.11 per cent.

(Agencies)

US: More Latinos converting to Islam

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by Aaron Morrison, IB Times

By most official measures, Latinos in the U.S. are considered to be the fastest-growing demographic. They are also the fastest-growing group of Muslims in America, according to organizations that cater to Hispanics converting to Islam. Although the statistics haven’t been widely tracked, there are an estimated 150,000 Islam converts among the Latino community in the U.S., reported the Press-Enterprise, a California newspaper.

The trend of Hispanic converts to Islam has been tracked by the Islamic Society of North America, which in 2006 estimated there were roughly 40,000 Latino Muslims in the U.S., according to a report by National Public Radio. Some community leaders said the recent growth of the demographic has its roots in a shared experience of immigration and the negative political rhetoric that advocates have deemed as anti-Muslim.

Mark Gonzales, a Muslim poet and artist in California, told the Orange County Register that immigration officials’ targeting of Mexicans and Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks helped the two demographics find common ground. “Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and Latinos are converting to Islam at a rate higher than any other [ethnicity],” said Gonzalez, who is of Mexican-American and French-American heritage and converted to Islam 12 years ago.

Most Latino Americans belong to the Roman Catholic Church, according to religion data tracked by the Pew Research Center. But the Catholic share of the Latino population has declined, while the number of Latinos who are Protestant or report no religious affiliation has risen.

Jihad Turk, president of Bayan Claremont, an Islamic graduate school in California, told the Press-Enterprise that Islam is most similar to Catholic beliefs. Muslims believe in many stories contained in the Christian Bible, including the prophets, he said.

“Muslims not only believe in God and the Ten Commandments, but also in Jesus as Christ born to the Virgin Mary and her story is told in the Quran in more detail than it’s told in the Bible,” Turk said. Organizations have formed in the U.S. to help the merging of Latino and Muslim communities.

Rida Hamida, president of the Arab American Chamber of Commerce in Orange County, California, has been working with Latino Muslims to highlight the merging of cultures. A series of public events scheduled for next month will focus on a time of Muslim rule in Spain and Portugal, from 711 and 1492, when Muslims, Christians and Jews cohabited along the Iberian Peninsula, Hamida told the Orange County Register.

Filmmaker Michael Moore to Donald Trump: We are all Muslim

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American filmmaker Michael Moore chastised Donald Trump for his anti-Muslim comments.

Michael Moore holding "we are all Muslim" sign in front of Trump Tower in New York city.

Michael Moore holding “we are all Muslim” sign in front of Trump Tower in New York city.

by Ali Younes, Al Jazeera

American filmmaker, political and social activist Michael Moore has sent Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a letter chastising him on his recent anti-Muslim statements and his call to “ban all Muslims from coming to the United States”.

In his letter, which he posted on his Facebook page on Wednesday night, Moore said Trump’s anti-Muslim statements “were made in depression and insanity”.

Moore also published a picture of himself in front of Trump Tower in New York with the caption “We are all Muslim”.

During his campaign stops, Trump called for a “total and complete” block on all Muslims entering the US and an end to Muslim immigration to the country.

Trump is the current frontrunner among the Republican candidates seeking the party nomination for the presidency of the United States.

In the letter, Moore reminded Trump that the US today is no longer a country of “angry white guys”, that the future US president will be chosen by more diverse voters and that “fortunately” the US no longer looks like Trump or his supporters.

Addressing Trump, Moore said: “Here’s a statistic that is going to make your hair spin: 81 percent of the electorate who will pick the president next year are either female, people of colour, or young people between the ages of 18 and 35 … In other words, not you” or “the people who want you leading their country”.

Moore went on to say that he was raised to believe in equality of people as brothers and sisters, regardless of race, colour and religion.

He added that “we are all Muslim, just as we are all Mexican, we are all Catholic and Jewish and white and black and every shade in between.”

Moore, born in Michigan in 1954, is known for his documentary films that criticised US gun laws, globalisation, the Iraq war and the US healthcare system.

He has been awarded several awards for his work, including an Academy Award for “Bowling for Columbine”, the 2002 film that examined the Columbine high school massacre in Colorado.

US mosque threatened as fears of shooting backlash rise

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Advocacy group denounces California shooting while saying it has been a target of anti-Islam hate calls and threats.

Police say they are still investigating the motive of the California shooting that killed 14 people [Reuters]

Police say they are still investigating the motive of the California shooting that killed 14 people [Reuters]

by Ted Regencia, Al Jazeera

The largest Muslim advocacy group in the United States has raised concerns of a backlash following the deadly California shooting with reports of a threat of violence received at one mosque and many hate calls.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington DC, on Thursday condemned the killing of at least 14 people in San Bernardino, while pleading “to not generalise from the acts of individuals to an entire faith community”.

US authorities said they were still investigating the motive behind the shooting spree, allegedly carried out by the suspects Syed Farook, 28, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 27. Reports said they were heavily armed with guns, bombs and ammunition.

Following the shooting, the New York Post – the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper – ran a banner headline calling the two dead suspects “MUSLIM KILLERS”. The paper later changed the headline.

“It’s completely outrageous that the New York Post would use that front-page headline,” Hooper told Al Jazeera.

He called the newspaper “irresponsible”, but added he was not surprised because “it is known for its anti-Muslim bigotry”.

“It’s inflammatory and we believe it incites hatred against all Muslims, not just against the people who allegedly carried out the San Bernardino attacks.”

Phone threats

As the names of the suspects were reported on Wednesday, the Manassas Mosque in Virginia received a voice message from an anonymous male caller threatening he would do to worshippers at the mosque what had been done to the victims in San Bernardino.

The mosque’s imam, Abu Nahedian, told Al Jazeera he received the half-minute profanity-laced message, forwarded to his personal phone, shortly before 11pm on Wednesday (0400 GMT Thursday).

Nahedian said he reported the incident to police, who were investigating the call along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Nahedian has been preaching at the mosque for more than 20 years, he said. In 2014, the Manassas Mosque was also vandalised.

He blamed a lack of education and awareness about Islam on the threats, saying educated people “know that we [Muslims] are the also victims” of violence.

Nahedian said worshippers at the mosque had been subjected to verbal abuse and other threats even before the San Bernardino attack had happened.

“This is part of our life anyway,” he said. “But we always teach the congregation to be kind to people, and to let your action be the defender of your faith.”

Spewing hatred

At CAIR’s heaquarters in the US capital, Hooper reported that he and his staff had received “lots and lots of hate messages” on Thursday.

“Most of them are just spewing hatred against Islam and Muslims, which is not illegal,” Hooper said.

In California, where the shooting happened, Ojaala Ahmad, spokesman of the state’s CAIR office, said Muslim Americans were as “heartbroken” about what happened as the rest of the country.

She admitted that she also became worried after hearing the identities of the attackers.

“I think it has become very common now that every time a Muslim person might be the perpetrator, the public and the media are quick to say that this was an act of terror without investigating what the actual motives were,” Ahmad said.

But in California anti-Islam sentiment “is not that blatant” as in other states, said Ahmad, and the Muslim community received “overwhelming support” from inter-faith advocates.

“They are saying that they support us and that they know that Islam is not a bad religion, and for us to stay strong in times of what we might be facing in the coming days with the anti-Muslim climate,” Ahmad said.

The question of genocide and Cambodia’s Muslims

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As many 500,000 Muslim Cham were killed by the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s, but some question if it was genocide.

Estimates say as many as 500,000 Cham Muslims were killed during Khmer Rouge rule from 1975-79 [AP]

Estimates say as many as 500,000 Cham Muslims were killed during Khmer Rouge rule from 1975-79 [AP]

by Clothilde Le Coz, Al Jazeera

Phnom Penh: A debate on whether the Khmer Rouge committed genocide against Cambodian Muslims during the 1970s continues after a UN war crimes tribunal resumed this week.

A large number of ethnic Cham, mostly Shia Muslims, were killed during the horrific Khmer Rouge rule from 1975-79 with some death toll estimates ranging from 100,000 to as high as 500,000.

In total, at least 1.7 million people were killed or died during the period through execution, starvation, and disease.

In recent months, the UN tribunal has held hearings on genocide charges levelled against Khmer Rouge chief ideologist Nuon Chea – also known as “Brother Number 2” – and former head of state Khieu Samphan over the killings of the Cham and ethnic Vietnamese in the country.

The tribunal found both men guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to life imprisonment in August 2014. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan have denied the genocide charges against them and appealed.

The legal defination of “genocide” refers to the intention of eliminating a group of people based on their race, religion, ethnicity or nationality.

Hearings held in September and October saw Cham witnesses give frightful testimonies of the persecution they endured under the Khmer Rouge.

The Muslim Cham were rounded up by Khmer Rouge forces, forced to eat pork, and banned from using their traditional language. Qurans were collected and burned.

During the trial, one witness, Sates No, 57, recalled Khmer Rouge soldiers separating Khmer and Cham people. One day, she testified, 300 women were tied up.

“[The soldiers] asked us if we were Cham or Khmer. If anybody answered she was Cham, she would be taken away… All those who said they were Cham were escorted and disappeared.”

Sates No lied to the Khmer Rouge soldiers to make them believe she was Khmer. “I said so for I was hopeless at that time and I did not want to be killed,” she said, recalling seeing corpses floating in circles in the river. “It was as if the souls of the dead did not want to vanish.”

Questions raised

Meanwhile, legal monitoring groups have levelled criticism against the Khmer Rouge Tribunal – the United Nations-backed court trying Cambodian leaders.

A recent report by legal monitors with the Asian International Justice Initiative, the East-West Center, and Stanford University’s WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice questioned the legal reasoning behind the cases.

The groups said the UN tribunal had failed to guarantee the most fundamental aspect of a criminal trial: a systematic application of the elements of crimes to a well-documented body of factual findings.

Victor Koppe, Nuon Chea’s defence lawyer, responded to the report’s release, saying: “It’s very satisfying to realise I’m not the only one thinking this institution is a complete farce.”

While the report did not make conclusions about the guilt of the accused, it said “the serious shortcomings of the judgment cannot be ignored”, and raised concern about the outcomes of subsequent trials held by the tribunal.

Koppe said the genocide charges “exist because I believe there has been a strong pressure on the tribunal to somehow adjudicate genocide charges. It is seen as ‘the crime of all crimes’.”

For its part, documents used by the prosecution include orders given by the Khmer Rouge government in 1979 that stated: “The Cham nation no longer exists on Kampuchean [Cambodian] soil belonging to the Khmer.

“Accordingly, Cham nationality, language, customs and religious beliefs must be immediately abolished. Those who fail to obey this order will suffer all the consequences for their acts of opposition to Angkar [the Khmer Rouge high command].”

Farina So, who heads the Cham Oral History project run by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, has recorded the experiences and coping strategies used by Cham Muslim survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime.

She said the regime did intend to eliminate the Cham. “Of course, the Chams were not the only group to suffer during the regime… But the motives seem to be quite different.”

Although the Khmer Rouge banned the practice of religion in general, So said the regime’s prohibiting the use of the Cham dialect, its destruction of mosques, and killing of the Grand Mufti, the leader of Cambodia’s Muslim community, showed that the Khmer Rouge regime branded Chams as their enemy.

Cham rebellions

However, Koppe argued that a genocide did not occur, and the Cham killings took place only at a local level after Cham resistance emerged in two villages in eastern Cambodia in September and October 1975.

The two rebellions were put down by Khmer Rouge fighters.

“This Cham rebellion was crushed pretty severely… and the ones responsible for it are, among others, Cambodia’s current prime minister and a senior senator [Ouk Bunchhoeun],” Koppe alleged.

The defence once again intends to ask Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Ouk Bunchhoeun to testify.

Attempts for comment from Hun Sen and Ouk Bunchhoeun were unsuccessful. The two have been repeatedly been asked to testify but they have not done so.

A Human Rights Watch report published earlier this yearnoted that Hun Sen was a Khmer Rouge commander in parts of Cambodia where atrocities were committed against the Cham.

During the hearings, Khmer Rouge cadres testified there was “no plan to purge Cham people”, despite earlier testimonies.

The court resumed this week to rule on the appeals. Nuon Chea  asked the court to invalidate the judgment, while Khieu Samphan demanded his sentence be reversed and he be released.

On Tuesday, however, proceedings at the tribunal were stalled following a statement from Nuon Chea read out by his co-lawyer Sun Arun.

“From day one, it was my strong impression that this tribunal was not at all interested in exploring the truth,” the former Khmer regime leader said. “Instead it seems to operate as though its mission was simply to indulge the instructions of a handful of officials in power, and tell a tale approved by the government before the tribunal was established.”

Following Nuon Chea’s statement, Sun Arun walked out of the courtroom.

Mumbai Police thrashed two young Muslims, asked them to go to Pakistan

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Mumbai: Residents of Mahim, two 19-year-olds Asif Shaikh and Danish Shaikh were allegedly detained and tortured by a few Bandra police officers on suspicion of being Pakistani terrorists or ISIS agents on Saturday, a leading daily reported.

Asif who works as a gym trainer was with Danish near Bandra Reclamation on the way back home from Bhabha Hospital, when they were allegedly picked up by the police.

Victims’ relatives and neighbours allege that both Asif and Danish were detained and grilled for over three hours and were beaten badly. They were even asked to “leave India and go to Pakistan” by the police, they said.

Asif was hit with belts and batons and Danish slapped and punched, after which the police finally made a call to their parents to take them back.

It is not clear whether the detention of Asif and Danish was made an official entry in police records.

Asif’s photo published in the news report shows the brutality he was treated with, but the police is yet to make comment on the incident.

(Agencies)

Muslim Americans win chance to sue NYPD for spying

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Philadelphia court rules plaintiffs had legal standing to assert claims that police surveillance violated their rights.

NYPD

by Kristen Saloomey, Al Jazeera

New York: An appeals court in the US has given Muslim Americans another chance to sue the New York Police Department for its surveillance on them.

Last year, a lower court had dismissed the case in which the police were accused of deliberately targeting Muslims because of their religion.

However, the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia reversed a lower court’s decision, finding the plaintiffs had legal standing to assert claims that the country’s so-called counterterrorism programme violated their rights.

(Agencies)

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