DECODING DENIALISM

Nadeem F. Paracha in The Dawn

Illustration by Abro


On November 12, 2009, the New York Times (NYT) ran a video report on its website. In it, the NYT reporter Adam B. Ellick interviewed some Pakistani pop stars to gauge how lifestyle liberals were being affected by the spectre of so-called ‘Talibanisation’ in Pakistan. To his surprise, almost every single pop artiste that he managed to engage, refused to believe that there were men willing to blow themselves up in public in the name of faith.

It wasn’t an outright denial, as such, but the interviewed pop acts went to great lengths to ‘prove’ that the attacks were being carried out at the behest of the US, and that those who were being called ‘terrorists’ were simply fighting for their rights. Ellick’s surprise was understandable. Between 2007 and 2009, hundreds of people had already been killed in Pakistan by suicide bombers.

But it wasn’t just these ‘confused’ lifestyle liberals who chose to look elsewhere for answers when the answer was right in front of them. Unregulated talk shows on TV news channels were constantly providing space to men who would spin the most ludicrous narratives that presented the terrorists as ‘misunderstood brothers.’

From 2007 till 2014, terrorist attacks and assassinations were a daily occurrence. Security personnel, politicians, men, women and children were slaughtered. Within hours, the cacophony of inarticulate noises on the electronic media would drown out these tragedies. The bottom-line of almost every such ‘debate’ was always, ‘ye hum mein se nahin’ [these (terrorists) are not from among us]. In fact, there was also a song released with this as its title and ‘message.’

The perpetrators of the attacks were turned into intangible, invisible entities, like characters of urban myths that belong to a different realm. The fact was that they were very much among us, for all to see, even though most Pakistanis chose not to. 

Just before the 2013 elections, the website of an English daily ran a poll on the foremost problems facing Pakistan. The poll mentioned unemployment, corruption, inflation and street crimes, but there was no mention of terrorism even though, by 2013, thousands had been killed in terrorist attacks.

So how does one explain this curious refusal to acknowledge a terrifying reality that was operating in plain sight? In an August 3, 2018 essay for The Guardian, Keith Kahn-Harris writes that individual self-deception becomes a problem when it turns into ‘public dogma.’ It then becomes what is called ‘denialism.’

The American science journalist and author Michael Specter, in his book Denialism, explains it to mean an entire segment of society, when struggling with trauma, turning away from reality in favour of a more comfortable lie. Psychologists have often explained denial as a coping mechanism that humans use in times of stress. But they also warn that if denial establishes itself as a constant disposition in an individual or society, it starts to inhibit the ability to resolve the source of the stress.

Denialism, as a social condition, is understood by sociologists as an undeclared ‘ism’, adhered to by certain segments of a society whose rhetoric and actions in this context can impact a country’s political, social and even economic fortunes.

In the January 2009 issue of European Journal of Public Health, Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee write that the denialism process employs five main characteristics. Even though Diethelm and McKee were more focused on the emergence of denialism in the face of evidence in scientific fields of research, I will paraphrase four out of the five stated characteristics to explore denialism in the context of extremist violence in Pakistan from 2007 till 2017.

The deniers have their own interpretation of the same evidence. In early 2013, when a study showed that 1,652 people had been killed in 2012 alone in Pakistan because of terrorism, an ‘analyst’ on a news channel falsely claimed that these figures included those killed during street crimes and ‘revenge murders.’ Another gentleman insisted that the figures were concocted by foreign-funded NGOs ‘to give Pakistan and Islam a bad name.’

This brings us to denialism’s second characteristic: The use of fake experts. These are individuals who purport to be experts in a particular area but whose views are entirely inconsistent with established knowledge. During the peak years of terrorist activity in the country, self-appointed ‘political experts’ and ‘religious scholars’ were a common sight on TV channels. Their ‘expert opinions’ were heavily tilted towards presenting the terrorists as either ‘misunderstood brothers’ or people fighting to impose a truly Islamic system in Pakistan. Many such experts suddenly vanished from TV screens after the intensification of the military operation against militants in 2015. Some were even booked for hate speech.

The third characteristic is about selectivity, drawing on isolated opinions or highlighting flaws in the weakest opinions to discredit entire facts. In October 2012, when extremists attempted to assassinate a teenaged school girl, Malala Yousafzai, a sympathiser of the extremists on TV justified the assassination attempt by mentioning ‘similar incidents’ that he discovered in some obscure books of religious traditions. Within months Malala became the villain, even among some of the most ‘educated’ Pakistanis. When the nuclear physicist and intellectual Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy exhibited his disgust over this, he was not only accused of being ‘anti-Islam’, but his credibility as a scientist too was questioned.

The fourth characteristic is about misrepresenting the opposing argument to make it easier to refute. For example, when terrorists were wreaking havoc in Pakistan, the arguments of those seeking to investigate the issue beyond conspiracy theories and unabashed apologias, were deliberately misconstrued as being criticisms of religious faith.

Today we are seeing all this returning. But this time, ‘experts’ are appearing on TV pointing out conspiracies and twisting facts about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. They are also offering their expert opinions on events such as the Aurat March and, in the process, whipping up a dangerous moral panic.

It seems, not much was learned by society’s collective disposition during the peak years of terrorism and how it delayed a timely response that might have saved hundreds of innocent lives.

Pakistan's Covid-19 strategy is to open Kashmir issue

In Urdu

Barrister Hamid Bashani realistic analysis of Muslim world

What's a 'lone wolf'? It's the special name we give white terrorists

Moustafa Bayoumi in The Guardian



We have a double standard in the United States when it comes to talking about terrorism. The label is reserved almost exclusively for when we’re talking about Muslims.

Consider Stephen Craig Paddock, the shooter in Sunday’s massacre in Las Vegas. Is he a terrorist? Well, the authorities aren’t calling him one, at least not yet.

This is all the more remarkable because Paddock’s actions clearly fit the statutory definition of terrorism in Nevada. That state’s law defines terrorism as “any act that involves the use or attempted use of sabotage, coercion or violence which is intended to cause great bodily harm or death to the general population”.

Stephen Craig Paddock shot and killed at least 59 people and injured more than 500 others. If that doesn’t qualify as a textbook definition of Nevada’s terrorism law, I don’t know what does.

Yet, when asked at a press conference in Las Vegas if the shooting was an act of terrorism, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo replied: “No. Not at this point. We believe it’s a local individual. He resides here locally,” suggesting that all terrorism is foreign in nature.

Lombardo didn’t call Paddock a terrorist, but he did label him a “lone wolf”, which in our lexicon is that special name we use for “white-guy terrorist”.

Nor is this oversight limited to Lombardo. Las Vegas’s mayor, Carolyn Goodman, also described Paddock not as a terrorist but as “a crazed lunatic, full of hate”. No doubt many other people will repeat the same sentiment in the days to come.

And Donald Trump, who craves every opportunity to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism”, avoided any mention of the word “terrorist” when discussing the tragic events of Sunday night.

Speaking from the White House, the president instead called the mass shooting “an act of pure evil”. Rather than offering sensible policy changes, such as greater gun control, the president had other ideas. He thinks we should pray more.

Paddock’s act though is, by definition, terrorism. Even under the stricter federal definition of terrorism, Paddock’s murderous rampage should qualify. The federal code defines “domestic terrorism” in part as “activities that appear intended to affect the conduct of government by mass destruction”. It’s hard, if not impossible, to understand how committing one of the largest mass shootings in American history is not “intended to affect the conduct of government”.

But one reason, beyond outright racism, why white people are less frequently charged with terrorism than Muslims in the United States lies with the little-known fact that while federal law does define “domestic terrorism”, it does not codify “domestic terrorism” as a federal crime. (At least 33 states do, however, have anti-terror legislation.) This is partly out of concern that such a statute could go a long way toward criminalizing thought and trampling on the first amendment.

Federal law does contain “hate crime” provisions, but in our present war on terror, it’s one thing to be convicted of “hate” and quite another of “terrorism”. Someone who hates is considered a bad person. Meanwhile, in the eyes of many, someone who is a terrorist doesn’t even deserve to be human.

What this legal reality translates into is a world where the vast majority of the high-profile terrorism prosecutions brought in this country, the ones announced by the justice department with great fanfare and heralding a safer future, basically never revolve around domestic terrorism.


This became clear recently when the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, surprisingly said that the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia at the hands of a white nationalist sympathizer constituted “domestic terrorism”. But lawyers repeatedly pointed out that at the federal level, domestic terrorism “doesn’t constitute an independent crime or trigger heightened penalties”, according to the website justsecurity.org.

Instead, the high-profile terrorism cases that do trigger heightened penalties are the foreign terrorism cases that almost always involve Muslims, especially since the justice department’s prosecutions of international terrorism is determined by a list of some 60 designated “foreign terrorist organizations”, most of whom are active in Muslim-majority countries. Even material support cases directly related to domestic terrorism are rarely prosecuted in federal court.

A bias, in other words, is embedded in the structure of our laws and how we prosecute them. Foreign terrorism prosecutions put the focus on Muslims and foreign conflicts, while domestic terrorism gets downplayed in our federal courts.


Any predisposition one may have already had that it’s Islam that produces terrorism is thus repeatedly reinforced in who gets prosecuted under our laws. And those attitudes, bolstered by the law, become mainstream in our news media, on our television screens, and in our day-to-day conversations with friends and neighbors.

But in the United States far more people, by orders of magnitude, are killed by gun violence than terrorism carried out in the name of Islam. We just don’t pay attention.


In 2017 alone, there have been 273 mass shootings, about one a day, and 11,671 deaths due to gun violence, according to Gun Violence Archive. Those numbers may surprise you. They did me, and they’re abysmal.

In our society, the federal government often directs the attentions of the people through their policies and priorities. Today, especially under Donald Trump, federal authorities seem even less interested in talking about domestic terrorism.

When a mosque in Minnesota was bombed earlier this year, for example, the White House didn’t even bat an eyelid. Meanwhile, acts like Trump’s Muslim ban reinforce the idea that anyone, anyone at all who comes from one of the barred countries – almost all of whom are Muslim-majority – ought to be considered a security threat.

The answer to this kind of institutionalized and deeply ingrained Islamophobia is to recognize how this clear double standard lets too many domestic terrorism perpetrators off the hook.

We should explain to our government that the interests of justice are served when the terrorism label is fairly and accurately applied.

We should point out to the government that, in their zeal to make the country safe from outsider threats, they are enabling domestic threats to proliferate. And we must hope that this administration in particular will see our warnings as a caution and not as a plan.

The End of Enlightenment?

Pervez Hoodbhoy in The Dawn

I was invited to lecture on ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Age of Global Terrorism’ at Missouri State University. Missouri is Trump country — he had a 70 per cent majority there. Some essential points are excerpted below.

The first seven words of the title belong to the 1776 Declaration of Independence from Britain: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

America’s founding fathers derived these ideas of equalitarianism from Europe’s then-bubbling cauldron of the European Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson’s phrase “all men are created equal” is perhaps one of the best-known and profound sentences in the English language.

But truths once self-evident to Americans are no more evident to very many today. They elected a president who sees differences between men as more important than their equality. Had America’s judiciary not struck down his executive order banning Muslims from setting foot on America’s soil, I could not have delivered the lecture. Europe — from where the Enlightenment sprang — is witnessing the emergence of exclusionists like Marie Le Pen and Geert Wilders. This phenomenon begs an understanding.

Some blame this on terrorist acts perpetrated by certain Muslims. Indeed one must not dismiss the importance of fear. Terrorism terrifies. Crazed fanatics piloting airliners into skyscrapers or driving trucks into holiday crowds scare everyone out of their wits. But how seriously should one take this threat, and where did these monsters come from?

Truthfully, we all stand guilty. All scriptures contain a radical strain but whether or not that tendency gets developed and amplified depends on political circumstances. A significant part of today’s organised terrorist groups — though by no means all — originate from the actions of the US and its allies. There would be no Taliban or Al Qaeda but for Ronald Reagan’s obsession with the ‘Evil Empire’, and no IS but for George W. Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq.
Even so, terrorists — unless they somehow seize nuclear weapons — are not an existential threat to humanity. The number of victims of terrorism is small compared to wars, traffic accidents, killings by deranged individuals, etc. Terrorism alone does not explain why the US is drifting away from its wonderful Enlightenment ideals.

Among the real reasons is growing economic inequality. To profess equality of humans is one thing, to enforce and protect this principle is yet another. When differences of wealth and power become astronomically large, grand assertions lose meaning.

Example: A popular — but absurd — Urdu couplet tells of Mahmood (sultan) and Ayyaz (slave) magically becoming equals as they pray side by side. But could King Salman al-Saud — just back after traveling to Indonesia with 505 tons of expensive luggage — and a Javanese Muslim peasant become equals even if that poor chap somehow got within praying distance alongside the monarch?

The US is faced with an equally absurd situation. Extreme income inequality is imperiling its future, and a decent life for citizens is ever harder to achieve. American CEOs draw seven-digit salaries, workers just five-digit ones. University education is increasingly restricted to richer sections of society. Forty-eight years ago in Boston I could do a weekly average of 20 hours of menial labour and cover nearly half of my university education. Today the same number of hours would not pay for even an eighth.

The upsurge of angry populism is actually fuelled not by terrorism but by America’s losing out in the global race. This is the conclusion reached by a global investment firm (GMO) which recently carried out an extensive data-driven study of this phenomenon. The report details how neoliberal economic policies are leading the US towards disaster.

Arising in the 1970s, neoliberalism has four key economic signatures: the abandonment of full employment as a desirable policy goal and its replacement with inflation targeting; an increase in the globalisation of the flows of people, capital, and trade; a focus at a firm level on shareholder value maximisation rather than reinvestment and growth; and the pursuit of flexible labour markets and the disruption of trade unions and workers organisations.

The upshot: the US has increasingly become a winner-take-all society. According to Forbes, the combined net worth of the 2016 class of the 400 richest Americans is $2.4 trillion, up from $2tr in 2013. The New York Times reported that the richest 1pc in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90pc. An angry populace is vulnerable to hate-spouting demagogues who blame everyone — Chinese, Mexicans, and Muslims.

This is only going to get worse because the days of American hegemony are gone, as is its absolute dominance of the world’s economy. When crises threaten, people everywhere tend to retreat into their comfort zones. Resurgent tribalism, aggressive nationalism, and religious fundamentalism become more attractive. But these can only provide solace, not solutions.

It would be tragic if the US were to fail its own constitution. Many countries are not even formally committed to accepting the equality of their citizens, and many more sharply discriminate between them even while professing not to. Pakistan’s constitution explicitly distinguishes between Muslim and non-Muslim, Iran officially espouses vilayat-i-faqih (guardianship of Islamic jurists), Saudi Arabia prohibits all places of worship on its soil except mosques. Although Israel lacks a constitution because of a conflict between its religious and secular forces, legally, as well as in practice, it privileges Jews over non-Jews. And India, which was once committed to secularism, is now turning into a state for Hindus run by Hindus.

How can the future of humanity be protected against this return to primitivism? No magical force drives history; there is only human agency. We must therefore educate ourselves into rising above accidents of birth, think critically, examine facts before forming opinions, keep widening the scope of our knowledge and, above all, act compassionately. To fight for universal humanism, world citizenship, and for the Enlightenment spirit is the only option for a world where boundaries are increasingly irrelevant.

Fans of Jet Airways, BJP, Congress and Dawood Ibrahim - Please look away now!

A Feast of Vultures - Josy Joseph

At Manthan 2016

Interview in Malayalam

Munir Saami on the State of Pakistan

In Urdu language

Smash the mafia elite: we should treat offshore wealth as terrorist finance

Paul Mason in The Guardian


Historical societies withered because the rich did not pay their taxes – we must not let the Panama Papers revelations pass without taking action

Panama Papers demonstration in Whitehall on Saturday. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock


Amid the cobbled passageways and tumbling tenements of the Italian city of Perugia, it’s possible to daydream you are in the middle ages. You are surrounded by medieval art and architecture. And then you think: hold on, what happened to the Renaissance?

Sure, there are some imposing private palaces from the period 1300-1500, and sure Raphael left half a fresco in a tiny chapel. But it’s not Florence. The money was clearly here at some point but, some time after 1300, the artistic, cultural and scientific riches moved somewhere else. By 1500, the city was “smaller, poorer and politically narrower” than 200 years before, writes historian Sarah Rubin Blanshei.

Why? Because the rich did not pay their taxes. The Perugian elite became a closed stratum of mafiosi, earning their money from mercenary work abroad, jealously guarding their family inheritance, stifling social mobility. Sound familiar?

As David Cameron’s fiasco over the Panama Papers collides with George Osborne’s over the budget, the danger is that we frame these merely as political scandals.

In fact, the Panama Papers point to a deeper sickness. Globalised capitalism has become an organised and legalised form of corruption, in which the work of the manager, the inventor and the entrepreneur come second to that of people whose wealth “works for them” – preferably in a jurisdiction nobody can see.

If you listen to Cameron’s defenders, their logic follows three contours: he did nothing illegal, nothing unparliamentary and nothing wrong.

I do not doubt his decision to invest in an offshore fund was legal.

That he failed to register his shares in Blairmore on becoming an MP, and lobbied for the protection of offshore trusts while being an undeclared beneficiary of one, does merit investigation by Parliament.

But it’s the insistence by the apopleptic right that he should not be criticised over tax avoidance – that “everybody does it” – that we should register as a kind of collective Marie Antoinette moment for the UK’s social elite.

If someone walked into a pub and announced they had found a way to scam the benefit system, they would face opprobrium or a swift, anonymous call to the benefit cheats hotline.

But a large part of the UK financial industry is dedicated to scamming the rules whereby both individuals and companies pay tax on income. London is home to literally hundreds of advisory companies – many of them registered professionals in finance, accountancy and the law – whose purpose is to do only this.

Governments today, like that of Perugia in the mid-1400s, are stuffed full of people who benefit from a legalised form of corruption. Photograph: Julian Elliott/Getty Images/Robert Harding Worl


The size of the missing tax take is disputed. If, as the Tax Justice Network estimates, the global wealth held offshore is $21tn, it might generate $188bn a year for cash-strapped governments.

Why don’t they act? Because, as with the government of Perugia in the mid 1400s, they are stuffed full of people who benefit.

Why doesn’t the populace revolt? Well, the problem with a globalised economy composed of nation states is that you can revolt all you like, beef up national tax systems, even expose the doings of the rich in newspapers ... but as long as the concept of “offshore” exists, so will the legalised corruption.

To the mature democracies of the world, the Panama Papers – as with the Lux Leaks, Swiss Leaks and numerous other data dumps before them – are a warning. If wealth equals power, then the doubling of ratio of wealth to income in the advanced economies since the 70s (see Piketty and Zucman 2014) could tilt power so far in the direction of a new hereditary elite that there is no return.

Last week, Costas Efimeros, the editor of a Greek investigative website, warned that the Panama revelations might be the “last chance” for leak-journalism. If a revelation does not provoke outrage, and the wrongdoers go unpunished, he wrote, “then the continuous revelation of scandals has the exact opposite result: defeatism, the feeling of weakness, the fatalistic acceptance of the rule of the powerful”.

If he is right, there are implications for all of us locked into this scrum around documents, reputations, professional codes and disputed facts.

First, this has to result in action. I am less concerned with taking down an already hapless British prime minister than with empowering him, or his successor, with the will to act unilaterally.

Britain could and should take direct rule of its tax-opaque dependencies. It should abolish non-domicile status. And it should create a taskforce within HMRC specifically designed to prosecute evaders and collect money from the aggressive avoiders.

Second, it has to result in words. I would settle for a prime-ministerial statement to be read out at Oxbridge colleges, public schools and in every bank, law firm and adviser registered with the FSA. It should say: “It’s over. There are no more respectable forms of tax avoidance and from now on offshore wealth will be treated the same way we treat terrorist finance.”

Third, it should be unilateral. The great lesson of the Italian city states in the high Renaissance was that if you will it, it can happen. You can will an economy where science, innovation, art and banking coincide: talented people get rich, inherited wealth soon evaporates; rulers listen to demands for social justice – and if they don’t, they burn.

Acting unilaterally goes against the DNA of the globalised elite. Their “nation” is the global system, and it’s seen as heresy for one country to act without others. “If we do, money will simply move offshore,” is the mantra. “Let it go,” should be the response.

Unilateral action by the UK would be powerful. It would disrupt the system of organised corruption and it would send a signal. We want to enjoy the best of what the next 20 years can offer our population – not the second best after a 1% elite has skimmed off the cream.

We don’t want to be a neo-feudal backwater, where inherited wealth and an unofficial mafia rules. We want to be the Florence, Bruges or Amsterdam of the coming century, not the Perugia.

Pakistan post Peshawar: What will we actually do

Ashraf Jehangir Qazi in The Dawn

WE have an unmatched instinct for farce especially when we adopt our most grave and serious postures.

Another all-parties conference; a dash to Kabul; a rage of hangings; a 20-point National Action Plan to succeed the still-born Nacta and NISP; a committee for every point of the NAP; subcommittees for every committee; an overall oversight committee led by the prime minister who proclaims zero tolerance; a defining moment; a do-or-die challenge; an unending jihad against jihadis; eternal cooperation with the military which is invited to discharge his responsibilities; military courts of dubious value and still more dubious constitutionality; warrants of arrest against facilitated ‘fararis’ (absconders), etc.

‘Democratic’ political leaders who until recently were locked in mortal combat are now united in complicit support for a ‘soft coup’ and a resurrection of the doctrine of necessity.

The Supreme Court judges realising the gravity of the situation met under the chairmanship of the chief justice to assess how the prosecution of those accused of terrorism could be prioritised and completed expeditiously.

---

The credibility of our counterterrorism commitment will need to manifest itself in our foreign policy

---

They have, accordingly, agreed on an eight-point plan. Their plan has been summarily shoved aside by the 20-point plan. So much for the rule of law! Will the Supreme Court now accept amendments to the Constitution that are against its ‘basic structure’ and clear intent and purpose? The superior judiciary is not incompetent. It has been impeded by those who would now supersede it.

There has been no collective and public (civil and military) leadership apology to the bereaved families and the nation. No acknowledgement of responsibility — indeed guilt — for bringing about a state of affairs in the country that directly and indirectly made the atrocity possible, if not likely. How can anyone say ‘this is a watershed moment’ or ‘we have at last turned the corner’? Our 9/11, no less, have been so many self-inflicted tragedies in our short history including the fall of Dhaka, military surrender and the break-up of the country. There has been the loss of the Siachen Glacier and the fiasco of Kargil. There has been the intermittent war in Balochistan over decades. There were unprincipled deals ceding control in a number of Fata areas to dangerous militants.

These militants have become today’s monsters responsible for the school atrocity and murder and mayhem of every kind in Pakistan. There has been Abbottabad leading to national humiliation and isolation abroad.

Have we responded to all this criminal impunity with a greater concern for national security, governance and leadership? Why, or rather how will it be any different this time? Well, because enough is enough! Our cup of patience runneth over! The leopard will at last change its spots. Inshallah! Indeed, we have a plan for it. Mashallah!

We know the history of inquiry commissions in Pakistan. Even so, why has our suddenly ‘united’ civil and military leadership not immediately sought to ‘break the mould’ by establishing a genuinely independent, repeat independent, and competent commission to inquire into all aspects of how Dec 16 came to pass?

Such an inquiry should, needless to say, seek to ascertain who bore the greatest responsibility for the political and security milieu, as well as the specific lead-up circumstances including lapses, that resulted in the tragedy. It should make a meaningful and comprehensive set of concise, relevant and mutually reinforcing policy recommendations that are continuously monitored and reported upon to the nation on a weekly basis by our ‘born-again’ leadership.

Counterterrorism in Pakistan has to be part and parcel of a comprehensive state and, indeed, societal transformation process. Yes, this is a longer term effort. But given our truly rotten circumstances, unless our action plan is embedded in a simultaneous commencement of this longer-term and much bigger project, it will lose direction, momentum and credibility very rapidly.

Solemn assurances to the contrary are rhetorical and meaningless because outside this broader transformation context they cannot be credible. This credibility of our counterterrorism commitment will also need to manifest itself in our foreign policy.

Take Afghanistan. Unless we deny the Afghan Taliban and their various cohorts and networks safe havens, sanctuaries and cross-border supply routes on our territory, how do we expect our commitments to President Ashraf Ghani and his government to be taken seriously? How would we play an acceptable role in a peacemaking and political reconciliation process in Afghanistan if the government in Kabul has grave reservations about our reliability as a partner?

If the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan are viable inside Afghanistan without our assistance we can still play a constructive role in facilitating reconciliation without seeking to use them as a check on India’s influence. If a terror-prone Afghan Taliban once again takes over Afghanistan, with or without our deniable assistance, it will be the TTP and not us who will gain ‘strategic depth’.

Take India. We need to have a predictable working relationship with it despite our continuing and significant differences on Kashmir and other issues. We will need to develop and implement modalities for managing our differences on Kashmir and building essential bilateral and regional cooperation to confront the challenges of the 21st century.

A state of ‘no war, no peace’ with a neighbour several times our size provides no context in which to pursue counterterrorism policies against organisations we have been prone to use as ‘proxies’, and which have done us no end of harm diplomatically and domestically.

Unless we radically rethink our external policy strategies how will we develop a credible counterterrorism policy and transform our economy and society? There is no indication of any of this in the national action plan. Will we finally do what we say and dismantle the whole infrastructure of terror inside Pakistan? Will we begin to rationalise our India and Afghanistan policies and come across as credible to ourselves and the international community?

On Pakistan - The real war is the war of narrative

Farrukh Khan Pitafi in The Dawn

 

The terrorist narrative of victimhood, denial and conspiracy theories can easily be deconstructed and dismantled.—Photo by Zahir Shah Sherazi

The closer you want to get to eradicating the menace of terrorism, the bigger this menace seems to get.

For the past week, following the attack in Peshawar, our leaders, both in Khaki and Mufti, have deliberated and deliberated. But this piece is not about them and the solutions they might come up with. It is about the sociology of the mindset that either justifies or rationalises terrorism, or impedes tangible action against it.

It is about the failure of the state and the society to come up with a narrative that can defeat the terrorists.

Terrorists of all hues — Al Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its countless affiliates, Afghan Taliban and its affiliates like the Haqqani network, India-focused terror groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and sectarian terror groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi — use two weapons: incredible hatred towards their victims and a narrative to convince and recruit new supporters to the cause.

This narrative of victimhood, denial and conspiracy theories can easily be deconstructed and dismantled. But what with the rising anger in the country, fracturing of the society and the general iffiness of the times we live in, no one has done anything substantial about the issue despite harping on about it at great length.

It is time we change that.

Also read: Changing Titanic’s course

After 9/11, the United States knew whom to blame and the nation’s anger was projected outwards. After 7/7, the United Kingdom knew whom to blame, and the country was able to vent its anger. After Mumbai attack, India too, vented its anger on Pakistan and somehow managed to cool off.

In Pakistan, though, where the state had pandered to extremist inclinations for long, at the time of 9/11 there was a dictator in place, whose rise to fame and then power owed a lot to the Kargil debacle. When General Musharraf decided to take a U-turn in his Afghan/Taliban policy, he gave his people the wrong reasons for doing so.

Instead of telling them that extremism of all kinds is bad for the country; that it can easily turn against the country's own people and that nation states are held accountable if found guilty of exporting destabilising ideologies beyond their borders; he told the nation that had Pakistan not taken the step, it would have been bombed back to the stone age.

That was an admission not of flawed policies but merely of foreign pressure.

At the time, there was neither any parliament nor the free media we see today. Lack of proper debate turned the country’s anger inwards. Later, conspiracy theories of sorts would emerge, people living in denial would scavenge western media sources for whatever half-truths would fit into their narrative.

Today, we have a developed popular narrative which says that Islam is in danger, that Pakistan is about to break; all of this is linked to belief in the end of time.

Look through: Friday sermons

All faiths have eschatological predictions. Since each brand of 'endism' focuses on end of the universe, the predictions are found to be dire and can easily be exploited at any time of adversity. Our local religious extremists and televangelists have very effectively inserted these prophecies into the reactionary narrative. By raising doubts about some of the most well-documented historical developments and mixing it with this narrative, the terrorists have managed to win over a host of fence-sitters.

Just textbooks or more?

A oft-made point is the ideological indoctrination in school textbooks. It is said that our books preach hate and a distorted version of history which unhinges a young impressionable mind from the very beginning.

Be that as it may, such a thought is predicated on the assumption that all Pakistanis go to school and imbibe every word written in the textbooks. While there is no justification of hatred finding way into the school books, these books barely play even a secondary role.

Even if the textbook is saying a certain thing, what the teacher thinks and what the best friend thinks matters much more to the pupil than what is written in the book. A young child spends more time with friends, family and in front of television.

So while it is important that the curriculum must be reformed, let us not lose sight of the fact that the problem is of understated heart-to-heart oral tradition which transmits through culture.

As a child, for instance, I usually internalised much of what my father used to think with considerably less resistance, and when I met my friends, our individual sets of views would collide with each other, evolving into something new altogether.

The tragedy of television

The quality of our television news product is quite important here. In the 24/7 live news cycle where a talk show host and a news director are forced to operate at breakneck speed and take decisions on the fly, very little thought is given to quality or for that matter, narrative.

Then there is the matter of the presence of Taliban and terrorist apologists amongst our midst, which creates a problem because while the moderate majority is too divided and disorganised, the sympathisers of terrorists are very well organised and persistent. So, the resultant end product invariably confuses viewers instead of clearing their minds.

See: Our denial killed children in Peshawar

But that is not all. The reason why viewers watch our news channels a lot is because our entertainment industry has been underperforming for a decade. The power of a drama serial should not be underestimated. A playwright can say things which are difficult or impossible to say on news channels.

Sadly, however, while a debate is underway to curtail the appearance of sympathisers of terrorism on live news networks, the storytelling in the entertainment industry still remains with the same forces who played a critical role in indoctrination.

As a result, the teleplays on political matters are often found to be highly reactionary, irrational and riddled with conspiracy theories.

Hostage crisis at the pulpits

Prayer leaders don’t usually go to regular schools or watch television; their tradition is essentially oral. There is no doubt that religious seminaries (some of which are genuinely committed to spreading hate) play a crucial role in forming their worldview. But it is daily interaction with other religious-minded people and groups (Tableeghi Jamaat for instance), the availability of vast amounts literature and personal assumptions which consolidate their distorted perceptions.

The threads which feed their mindsets, some of which I have reproduced below, are of such a nature that every maulvi gets ensnared in the enemy’s propaganda with very little resistance. The message from the pulpit, may it be in the shape of the Friday sermon or the after-prayer dua, is essentially highly reactionary and counter-productive, to say the least.

What we need right now is a supply of religious scholars of integrity who can answer these questions with comfort and authority to reclaim the narrative in the mosques from the terrorists.

The terrorist's narrative

Here are some assumptions that play a crucial role in the terrorist and his sympathiser’s narrative:

Islam is in danger:

Muslims are scattered all over the world. Given their recent turbulent history it is claimed that Islam as a faith is on the brink of extinction and only violent jihad can save it. One look at the 1400 years of their history and you realise that the faith can take care of itself and needs no saviors.

These are end-of-time wars:

Islamic eschatology predicts the arrival of an Antichrist called Dajjal, and it is said that whoever chooses to side with him will never be forgiven. Now, years of propaganda has projected the West as that Antichrist. Ergo the fear that is easily exploited by terrorists.

Muslims all over the world, owing to the absence of timely 'ijtehad' or interpretation, have found it difficult to integrate with local cultures. After every two or three centuries, they are confronted with challenging times and start thinking this is the end of time.

A careful survey of Islamic literature shows no timeframe is originally given about the end. In expert hands, this element of doubt should be enough to debunk the terrorist’s propaganda.

Muslim ideal is a pan-Islamic Caliphate:

The current schools of thought in Islam took their final shape almost a millennium ago. As further debate could generate controversy, no one showed interest in challenging these dated interpretations. That era was the time of empires and nation states did not emerge until much later, till the treaty of Westphalia.

Hence, the last political model known to the Islamic thought is a theocratic Muslim empire called the Caliphate.

Explore: Political Islam: Theory and reality

Itself an interpretation, this model is highly outdated and inefficient. The Ottoman Empire was a big example of the inefficiency. However, terrorists and a long list of intellectual movements (like Hizbut Tahrir) that serve as bedrock for them, use this thought to recruit new volunteers.

If, however, you study the formative phase of Islam, you will notice that Islam as a faith is not averse to the idea of a nation state. That is another thought which can be expanded to counter the terrorist’s narrative.

Muslims are victims:

Terrorists exploit the all-pervasive feeling of Muslim victimhood to their advantage. It is stunning to see that this perception has lingered on in our country for this long.

Pakistan has accumulated over 50,000 dead bodies as gifts given to it by these 'saviours' of Muslims. How hard can it be to expose these people for who they really are?

Pakistani state is fighting terrorism due to foreign pressure:

I have explained this point at length at the start. The state must own this war and explicitly state that it is being waged for the nation's good, not under international pressure. It's a promising sign that the government is finally doing that. It will also be helpful if foreign countries didn’t appear to be pressuring the country to do more. Any concerns can be conveyed through the diplomatic channel; negotiating through the media should stop.

Democracy is evil and un-Islamic:

This, too, is an ugly propaganda tool. Democracy as the cultural 'other' is used to lure people in to the extremist side.

A bit more sensitisation about democracy and exploration of political thought in Islam would make it plain that democracy is not antithetical to the original teachings of Islam. What we lack is religious interpretation on the matter. It is tragic that no coherent work has been done in this regard during the past 13 years of fighting terrorism.

Terrorists are good Muslims:

Somewhere in their heads is this deep seated regimentation that at the end of the day, the terrorist's demand — imposition of Shariah — is a legitimate one, and so it's wrong to fight them.

This is one of the terrorist’s biggest weapons. Again, the havoc these terrorists have wreaked should speak for itself. But since, for a large number of people, it appears to have not done so, we need organised campaigns to educate the public of the real context and designs of the terrorist movement. It would help if religious figures of authority came forward shattered the myth of 'good terrorists'.

Foreign powers are doing it and blaming it on unsuspecting religious groups:

The proscribed terrorist organisations take responsibility and post videos as proof. All the apologists contributing to an alternative explanation can be and should be confronted in this regard. This can bear fruits.

Pakistan was conceived as a religious state hence it should cave in to the extremist pressure:

You will find this argument widely available in the society. But given that terrorists are essentially against Pakistani state, the state will also have to end its ambivalence on the issue and come up with an identity of the state which is not entirely dependent on religion. It is not that difficult to find such an interpretation.

---

These are some of the assumptions that the terrorists play with. The state’s reluctance to address them has led to the current proliferation of terrorist outfits. It has played a crucial role in the birth and growth of such organisations. Now, it cannot shut its eyes to their mutating ideology and pretend that the problem will go away. It knows their language, it can speak to them. I understand that it is not easy to control every Friday sermon and talk in every mosque and madrassah. But if the state comes up with a coherent narrative and sells it to the opinion makers, the terrorists’ narrative can easily be undone.

Read on: Happy to be wrong

Political and democratic ownership is essential because in the past lack of it has ruined the effort. The state knows how to highlight the narrative and sell it in the media and elsewhere despite resistance from the apologists.

HSBC closes some Muslim groups' and individuals' accounts

30 July 2014 By Dominic Laurie BBC News
Reporter, Radio 5 live

HSBC bank has written to Finsbury Park Mosque and other Muslim organisations and individuals in the UK to tell them that their accounts will be closed.

The reason given in some cases was that to continue providing services would be outside the bank's "risk appetite".

The wife and teenage children of a man who runs a London based Islamic think-tank have also been contacted.

HSBC said decisions to close accounts were "absolutely not based on race or religion".

"We do not discuss relationships we may or may not have with a customer, nor confirm whether an individual or business is, or has been a customer.

"Discrimination against customers on grounds of race or religion is immoral, unacceptable and illegal, and HSBC has comprehensive rules and policies in place to ensure race or religion are never factors in banking decisions."

No chance

Finsbury Park Mosque in North London was written to by HSBC on 22 July.

The only reason given for the intention to close its account was that "the provision of banking services… now falls outside of our risk appetite".

In the letter, the bank notifies the treasurer of the mosque that it will close the account on 22 September.

Khalid Oumar, one of the trustees of the mosque, questioned the motives behind the letters.

"The letters that have been sent and the letters that we received do not give any reason why the accounts were closed in the first place," he said.

"That has led us to believe that the only reason this has happened is because of an Islamophobic campaign targeting Muslim charities in the UK."

'Astonishing'

The mosque's chairman Mohammed Kozbar told the BBC: "The bank didn't even contact us beforehand. Didn't give us a chance even to address [their] concerns.

"For us it is astonishing - we are a charity operating in the UK, all our operations are here in the UK and we don't transfer any money out of the UK. All our operations are funded from funds within the UK."

Until 2005, the mosque was run by Abu Hamza, who in May this year was convicted of terrorism offences in the United States.

"The positive work we have done since taking over over from Abu Hamza to change the image of the mosque, there is nothing really that can explain [HSBC's decision]," says Mr Kozbar.

"They have put us now in a very, very difficult situation - this is the only account we have."

Mr Kozbar says HSBC's decision could have negative repercussions for the bank.

"We are sure that our community will be frustrated, and might consider closing their accounts themselves with HSBC if the bank doesn't reopen our account, or at least give us an explanation."

Jeremy Corbyn, the local MP for Finsbury Park, says he has worked with the mosque ever since it was built.

"Over the past 10 years, it has developed into a superb example of a community mosque supporting local people and providing facilities for all faiths if they need it.

"I am shocked and appalled at the decision of HSBC."

'Unsettling'

Anas Al Tikriti was born in Baghdad, but has lived in the UK for several decades. His family has also received letters. He runs the Cordoba Foundation, a think tank on Islamic issues set up in 2005 in order to address, he says, the relationship between Europe and the Middle East.

He, his wife, his 16- and 12-year-old sons all received separate letters this week from HSBC informing them that their accounts would be closed in September. This time, no reason was given.

Mr Al Tikriti says he has banked with HSBC since the 1980s and has rarely been overdrawn.

"It is unsettling. I am not used to being addressed in those terms. It's like I have done something wrong. The involvement of my family disturbs me. Why the entire family?"

"I can only speculate - and I wish someone from the bank could explain [why the accounts were closed]. The organisations are mainly charities and the link is that many of them if not all of them are vocal on the issue of Palestine."

"It would be a great shame if that was true. As I'm left to speculate, that's the only reason I can come to."

His think tank, the Cordoba Foundation, which also banks with HSBC, was also told that its account will close, with an almost identical letter to that sent to the Finsbury Park Mosque, and dated the same day.

'Alternative arrangements'

Ummah Welfare trust, based in Bolton, has distributed £70m to projects in 20 countries. It has had a presence in Gaza for 10 years.

In a letter, also dated 22 July, HSBC gave Ummah the same reason for closing its account that it had given to the Finsbury Park Mosque - that "provision of banking services now falls outside our risk appetite".

It then gave the charity two months' notice of its decision to close the trust's accounts.

"You will need to make alternative banking arrangements, as we are not prepared to open another account for you," the letter continues.

Mohammed Ahmad, who runs Ummah, says it is a dream customer for a bank and always in credit.

He asked HSBC in a meeting why the accounts were closing, but says the bank's representative gave them no answer.

Mr Ahmad says that they "have always tried to work within a legal framework and accommodate banks, if, for example, there was an issue with sanctions".

Mr Ahmad says he thinks HSBC has made its decision because of its work in Gaza, where he says Ummah provides "ambulances, food aid, medical aid, and grants."

"We make sure we go out of the way to work with organisations that are non-partisan. What we do now is we do a check on Thomson Reuters and make sure that there is no link whatsoever with blacklisted organisations. We don't want to damage our relief efforts. We have tried our best to be non-partisan as much as possible."

A government official the BBC spoke to said they did not believe this was the result of government action but reflected a decision the bank had taken itself based on its own risk analysis.

In December 2012, HSBC had to pay US authorities $1.9bn (£1.2bn) in a settlement over money laundering, the largest paid in such a case. It was alleged to have helped launder money belonging to drug cartels and states under US sanctions.

In August last year, it was reported that HSBC asked more than 40 embassies, consulates and High Commissions in the UK to close their accounts. At the time, the bank said "HSBC has been applying a rolling programme of "five filter" assessments to all its businesses since May 2011, and our services for embassies are no exception."

The Charities Commission has confirmed that it is not investigating any of the organisations involved and says that if the charities don't have a relationship with bank it could harm public trust in their work.

Obama is all about 'universal rights' - except for Muslims

It's time the president acknowledges that systematized discrimination against Muslims is real and thriving

• 
• • Uzma Kolsy
  • theguardian.com, Saturday 31 August 2013 12.30 BST

Jay Leno talks with President Barack Obama during a commercial break on 6 August 2013. Photograph: Paul Drinkwater/NBC/Getty Images

I was watching President Obama employ his devilish charisma, in routine fashion, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in early August. The banter dissipated as the interview took a more serious turn to embassy closures, Edward Snowden and, finally, Russia. Obama condemned President Vladimir Putin for Russia's recent "homosexual propaganda" bill saying:

"When it comes to universal rights, when it comes to people's basic freedoms, whether you are discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, you are violating the basic morality that should transcend every country."

I was left rattled by the president's statement. Obama, who made history last year whenhe expressed his support for same-sex marriage, was comfortably unabashed in impugning Russian leadership on the reprehensible policy, as he should have been. But as a Muslim American, neither the irony nor the hypocrisy of his statement, championing "universal rights", was lost on me.

As we've witnessed time and time again domestically, most recently with the Associated Press revelation that the NYPD designated Muslim houses of worship and community centers as terrorist organizations, the United States is no stranger to legalizing discrimination. In the elusive pursuit of true equality, President Obama has made considerable and long overdue progress in securing the rights of the LGBT community. But he in no way can tout the badge of "basic morality" until he acknowledges that many Americans are being confronted with institutionalized discrimination in every tier of the government hierarchy. Racism, Islamophobia and prejudice run amok in our society, but when discriminatory practice is etched into law, it harkens back to a sinister time in our nation's history.

Regrettably, branding mosques as terrorist enterprises doesn't exactly move the needle given the NYPD's history of targeted surveillance and monitoring of the region's Muslim community. Invidious policy and religious profiling are not confined to the NYPD either. This is just the latest in a mounting string of offenses by government agencies against Muslim Americans. The FBI maintains an intimidatingly lengthy catalog of 15,000 spies, three times as many as there were 25 years ago. In a post 9/11 climate many of them operate as informants in mosques throughout the nation. The mosque that I grew up attending in Irvine, California, was infiltrated by one such informant, who worked so hard to plant seeds of violence and terrorism in the minds of its congregants that members of the mosque immediately reported him.

"Geo-mapping", the FBI's purported tactical crime fighting tool, was exposed as a covert mapping program to track and monitor Muslim communities engaging in constitutionally protected activity, without any suspicion of crime. Leaked FBI training materials have also cemented what we already know – the agency religiously profiles Muslims,instructing its agents that "mainstream" Muslims are terrorist sympathizers and the Muslim practice of giving charity is a cover for funding "combat".

It doesn't end there. Seven states have passed anti-Shariah legislation, redundant and extraneous laws that explicitly prohibit the use of foreign law in American courts, as already established by our nation's constitution. The bills passed in these states, most recently North Carolina, alienate the Muslim community and unfairly paint them as adherents of an archaic, anti-Western system, playing up longstanding stereotypes and stoking fears. Open-ended guidelines for Homeland Security initiatives, like the Suspicious Activity Reporting program, give credence to the subjective biases of citizens and law enforcement alike, allowing for religious profiling when dubbing something as "suspicious". And that is apart from the FBI Watch List and the TSA's No-Fly List.

TSA memos have indicated that their passenger screening process includes "things passengers might do which also might be things a terrorist would do, eg, pray to Allah right before the flight that you might have 90 virgins in heaven". Needless to say, many of these counter-terrorism measures disproportionately target Muslims. We see this disparity even in federal prison, where Muslims make up only 6% of the general federal prison population, but comprise two thirds of the inmates in Communication Management Units (CMU), prison units furtively created to isolate certain prisoners.

And all the while, the president has remained unnervingly silent.

I shouldn't have to point to statistics that most informants actually acted as agent provocateurs in terrorism probes. I also shouldn't have to cite that there is a dearth of evidence to prove that these national security measures, like the SAR program, are effective in combatting terrorism. I shouldn't have to clarify that there is no specter of Shariah law looming on the horizon and that Muslims are not looking to prop up a crescent and star flag in state capitols. And I've come undone at the thought of having to explain, again, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims being spied on, monitored, tracked and, in the case of 16 year old US citizen Abdulrahman Awlaki, killed – by federal, state and local agencies- are innocent of any wrongdoing.

My father's Islamic name should not place him on a watch list. When I pray in the airport, I should expect law enforcement to protect my right to do so, not jot notes in a security memo. And I should be able to attend my mosque without fear of reprisal, from anti-Muslim bigots and FBI spies alike. Being Muslim does not make me a criminal. I shouldn't have to say it, but secret measures that profile Muslims and veiled discriminatory policies assume as much.

This is not a "new low for the NYPD"; it's a dangerous manifestation of a foregone conclusion: in the name of national security, the civil rights afforded to Muslim Americans are being deliberately curtailed. It's time that the president acknowledges that systematized discrimination against Muslims is real and thriving, and expands the reach of his advocacy for universal human rights to include Muslim Americans.

Dark moments of institutionalized racism, alienation and ostracism besmirch this nation's history. It is all too coincidental that we recently marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's legendary "I have a dream" speech – the impetus that led the FBI to surreptitiously launch one of the biggest surveillance operations in history – spying on Dr King himself. The idea that the government was looking for dirt on Dr King to discredit and destroy him seems ludicrous and offensive today. Here's hoping the president sees the historical irony.