__._,_.___
I see no reason to object to the government participate in foreign torture. It is only a small extension to the domestic torture wreaked on the country every day.
Perhaps this could be (or already is) a new money earner for our glorious leaders.
For those arguing for some form of prevention - exactly what steps are there to be taken when a Bangladeshi minister or civil servant can be bought and sold 10 times a day!
Long live BAL....literally.
Emanur Rahman | m. +447734567561 | e. emanur@rahman.com
The Security service is facing fresh accusations of involvement in the abuse of terrorism suspects after a British man was detained in Bangladesh and allegedly tortured while being questioned about his activities and associates in both countries.Lawyers representing Gulam Mustafa, a 48-year-old Birmingham businessman, say there is evidence he has been severely mistreated since being arrested in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, in mid-April.
The case appears to present an immediate challenge to a new government, and will give some insight into the manner in which it will deal with the growing number of allegations of collusion in foreign torture.At their last party conference, the Liberal Democrats passed a resolution calling for a judicial inquiry into the UK's role in torture and rendition.
The Conservatives, however, have said only that they will not rule out an inquiry. Labour ministers have issued blanket denials of collusion in torture, but have declined to address specific allegations.Mustafa appeared to have a swollen face when he was paraded before television cameras shortly after his arrest, according to his family.
When he appeared in court 11 days later, a journalist working for the Guardian could see that he was unable to stand throughout the proceedings, at one point sinking to his knees.The businessman told a British consular official he had been forced to assume stressful positions for long periods during questioning at a detention centre known as the Taskforce for Interrogation Cell, where the use of torture is alleged to be common.
Lawyers for Mustafa's family said there were strong grounds to believe that British officials had been complicit in his mistreatment and they were considering bringing legal action against the government.They were angry that the UK High Commission in Dhaka had failed to secure consular access to Mustafa for more than two weeks after his arrest or arrange for him to be seen by a doctor.
The family's solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said in a letter to the foreign secretary, David Miliband: "It is already well known that MI5 has been co-operating with the Bangladeshi authorities and providing and exchanging information with them about Mr Mustafa."
She said a number of Mustafa's associates in the UK had been questioned about him, adding: "There is serious reason to believe that the security services have therefore been mixed up in the ill-treatment carried out by the Bangladeshi authorities and this is still ongoing."In his reply, Miliband said Mustafa's welfare was the "primary objective" of the Foreign Office, but he did not address the allegations of MI5 complicity in the mistreatment.
Asked about the allegations, a Foreign Office spokesperson said: "The government's position on torture is clear. We condemn it wholeheartedly."We do not torture people, and we do not ask others to do so on our behalf. We take all allegations of torture and mistreatment very seriously. With an individual's permission, we can take up any justified complaint about ill-treatment with the relevant authorities."
The Foreign Office told the Guardian it had made repeated requests to see Mustafa before finally being allowed access to him on 2 May.The Bangladeshi foreign ministry rejected this statement, saying it had received only one such request – the day after Mustafa's lawyers wrote to Miliband – and that the request had been promptly granted.
Mustafa has been of interest to MI5 for several years. In April 2007, a month after he travelled to Bangladesh, leaving his wife and six children at the family home in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham, the Bank of England employed counter-terrorism powers to impose financial sanctions upon him, freezing his assets and prohibiting others from making funds available to him.
Mustafa's family said he was frightened to return to the UK after this happened.After his departure, a number of his associates in Britain were questioned by MI5 officers, close relatives said.Shortly afterwards, Mustafa moved into a flat in an upmarket suburb of Dhaka and told his family the rent was being paid by one of the country's intelligence agencies, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI).
His wife repeatedly asked him to return to Birmingham, and he told relatives, in a telephone call in November that year, that he was planning to do so. Five days later, he was arrested and charged with a firearm offence.
Mustafa's defence was that he watched police officers plant the weapon during a search of the flat and, when he demanded to know why they were doing it, he was told it was at the instigation of British authorities.He was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison, but was released on bail in January pending an appeal.He was re-arrested on 16 April and accused of distributing funds to Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, a militant Islamist organisation banned in both Bangladesh and the UK.
Twelve months ago, Jamil Rahman, another British terrorism suspect who had been detained and allegedly tortured in Bangladesh, told the Guardian British intelligence officers had threatened him with reprisals if he did not give evidence against Mustafa in an English court.
"They told me that they would arrange for somebody to give evidence against me in court if I didn't agree," he said.Rahman, 32, a former civil servant from south Wales, said that, after being tortured by DGFI officers, he was repeatedly interrogated by men who identified themselves as MI5 officers.
He was never charged with any offence and eventually returned to the UK, where he began civil proceedings against the government.The next government will inherit this case and a number of others lodged by British citizens and residents who were victims of rendition or who allege they were tortured before being questioned by British intelligence officers.
One of the litigants has been convicted of terrorism offences. None of the others has been charged with any offence.The government is expected to offer out-of-court settlements to a number of the men after the court of appeal earlier this month dismissed an attempt by MI5 and MI6 to suppress evidence of alleged complicity in torture.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/11/mi5-torture-allegations-briton-bangladesh
A fine piece of writing by Mahmood Farooqui!! I want to read Chiraghon Ka Dhuvan. I wonder if there is an English Translation.
On Thinking
Mahmood Farooqui
August 21, 2009
KAFILA
Author of this Article: Mahmood Farooqui studied history In
Intizar Hussain, SI, is eminent living Urdu fiction writer. He was born on December 7, 1923 in Dibai, Bulandshahr
Once it is granted that in
The reason I bring this up in particular relates to the case of
In the particular case of
Intizar Husain's enthralling literary memoir Chiraghon ka Dhuvan, brings a lot of these issues into the open without ever underlining them. Classical music in
Here is a particular conversation with the poet Salahuddin Mahmood, a self proclaimed Sufi who wrote highly emotionally charged letters from Madina, and aspired to relive the physical moment when the Prophet breathed upon this earth. But one day he called all his friends, put out the light and began to play M. S. Subbahlakhsmi singing Mirabai's bhajans. When Husain queried him on this apparent contradiction, Salahuddin Mahmood's response was, 'my Islam is incomplete without Mirabai. The thing is Intezar Saheb that I was not born in a vacuum, I am a progeny of those Muslims who have been seeped in this habitat for over nine hundred years. Once the date tree is transplanted to this land from Arabic, perforce the fruit would taste different.'
Husain's memoirs also highlight the now forgotten the fact that it was in fact the condemnatory and dismissive attitude of the leftists that dealt as much of a body blow to classical music in Pakistan as the intransigence of the Islamists. Here is a note from Iftekhar Jalib, a noteworthy leftist and a great friend and acolyte of Faiz who wrote in response to one of Husain's newspaper columns-
'the days of Raag Darbari are now well and truly over, only Qawwali will prevail. Pure classical music cannot escape its elite origins, keeping it alive is akin to keeping the old feudal power structure alive.'
In a rebuttal to that the writer Hayat Ahmad Khan described a meeting with Maulana Maudoodi the godfather of Jamat-e Islami and in many ways the leading ideologue of political Islam in
Husain narrates anecdotes relating to Ustad Amanat Ali Khan who complains about the fact that PTV authorities have been asking him to sing Ghazals and light songs rather than the classical Ragas like Bageshwari that he truly enjoyed singing. A letter from Roshanara Begum narrates the fate of a television lecture demonstration in 1972 which was badly truncated because some sections, remnants really, of the erstwhile
It was the leftist Anwar Sajjad, otherwise a radical pioneer in the new Urdu short story movement, who eased out stalwart artists like Nazamat Ali, Salamat Ali and Amanat Ali Khan from space and prominence at the Alhamra Arts Council Lahore. The point that I am stressing is that an Islamic state is not a finished form which droppeth like a gentle rain from heaven. The struggle before an Islamic state, as much as a secular one, is to negotiate paths of legitimacy amidst conflicting claims and options. Approval for state action eventually lies in the realm of public opinion whether it is ratified in direct elections or is guessed by demagogues who want to manipulate public opinion.
Husain writes movingly of the times of war between
'Intezar Saheb, these days I read Rilke and try to paint the moon, which rises on both sides of the border.'
Take the case of Cinema. Films continue to be made in
The point is not that the Indian society or that part of it which is civil is the same as it is in
While a smug sense of superiority over our neighbors is sometimes useful in upholding social pride, a more discerning eye may develop more useful long-term lessons from the way our neighbors deal with problems that are common to us and them. A proper history of
Very like the Indian state, the Pakistani state has constantly encouraged family planning and has instituted schemes to control the rate of increase of population. It propagates programs encouraging female literacy and the participation of women in public, civic institutions. Newspapers and wider civil society in
More crucially, where it really matters, the Islamic Republic has shown no signs of allowing any moral or religious compunctions stand in the way of its singular pursuit of the market and of the encouragement of interest-based private profit and financial capitalism. One may argue that Islam was after all a traders' religion therefore the pursuit of free market should be consistent with its ethics. And indeed it largely is, regardless of scores of state supported institutions that continue to search for sharia-nomics.
Interrogating my response to Husain's memoirs immediately brings into salience my Indian Muslim compulsions. I would obviously like to tease out strands of syncreticism and even, the obvious word, secularism from the conduct and cultural practice of Muslims past and present, Indian and Pakistani. Even more so I would, I suspect sometimes, alongside many of my compatriots, like to hear notes of regret and repentance from all who migrated at partition or from those who had once wanted
Sixty years after the event it is only we Indians who have the bravado to reduce decisions buried hard and deep in past lives into a simple question of 'why did you migrate?' I had asked Husain this question when I interviewed him some years ago, indeed he himself begins his memoir by raising this very question. The question is utterly and completely meaningless. Those who understand the Urdu word tabir, should instead ask questions about dreams turning sour and tabirs producing counter results. People went for all sorts of reasons and those who did have quite possibly thought about and turned the question over so many thousands of times in their own minds and have perhaps interrogated the what ifs and the counterfactual with such intensity that asking simply why they went is not merely trivial but even fatal in its stupidity. Indeed it should be possible now to see how the demand for
For all these reasons it may be rather useful for us to actually study
These arguments, impressionistic as they are, should not be read as an endorsement of the current state of
A true Islamic state is an oxymoron, it can only function at the level of a small tribe. The rest is a negotiation with power. In order to fully fathom those struggles and negotiations we need a much wider engagement and a much greater dissemination and assessment of knowledge than is currently available to us.
Simply awesome!
Women and veils : Running for cover
May 13th 2010 | PARIS | From The Economist print edition
STRIKING a balance between personal and religious freedom, and the ideals of common citizenship, is proving to be an enormous test for all European countries with large Muslim populations—especially when some seem determined to assert, or even caricature, the practices of their homelands.
Certain things are easily settled: virtually everybody in Europe agrees in abhorring female genital mutilation, as practised in bits of Africa; or the harsh punishment of children in Koranic schools, which has occurred in Britain. But in recent months a third controversy has shown up contrasts between European countries and within them. This is over female headgear—and in particular, forms of dress in which all, or virtually all, the face is hidden. These include the head-covering burqa; and the commoner niqab, in which only a slit is left for the eyes. The burqa, imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban, has become a catchall term for headgear in which the face is wholly or mainly concealed.
Last month 136 of Belgium's 138 lower-house legislators (who agree on little else, leaving their country near paralysis) voted to outlaw the burqa. Belgian police already have the right to stop people masking their faces, under an old security law; and in some cities this right is invoked to issue warnings to burqa-wearers, who number only a few dozen in the country. So it is hard to see what need the law serves. But a parliamentarian in Brussels said it created a rare moment of "pride in being Belgian" by "smashing the lock that has left quite a lot of women in slavery." He hoped at least four European countries would follow.
This week France's parliament approved a resolution deploring full-face cover, and legislation is due shortly. In Switzerland one of the 26 cantons has voted to work for a nationwide ban; the justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, backs a ban, at least in cantons that want it. The Dutch authorities considered outlawing the burqa, then stepped back. But in Europe as a whole, the idea of making people show their faces is no longer a xenophobic fantasy, but a mainstream political project.
With a fresh election due in June, Belgium's law is on hold; but it may be the first of many European bans on "all clothing hiding the face totally, or mostly." Belgian women who wear the burqa in public will risk a modest fine or even seven days' jail. In Italy a woman was fined €500 ($630) last week for wearing the burqa in a town where the Northern League mayor had barred clothing that hinders police checks.
The resolution passed by French legislators has no legal force but it has huge symbolic impact. Recalling the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights, it says the all-over veil "puts women in a relationship of subordination to men". On grounds of "dignity" and "equality between men and women", it judges the garment "contrary to the values of the republic". A law to ban the burqa will go to cabinet on May 19th.
In some places such moves have been promoted by the far right. Italy's Northern League, which wants a national burqa ban, is xenophobic. In Britain the anti-European United Kingdom Independence Party is the only party to agitate for a burqa ban. Ed Balls, a minister in the outgoing Labour government, said it was "not British" to tell people what to wear in the street. Jack Straw, a senior Labour figure who once voiced dismay over women who hid their face when meeting him, is still "fundamentally opposed" to a ban. And Barack Obama said in Cairo last year that Western countries should not be "dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear".
In France, by contrast, the backers of a ban are neither extremists nor fringe feminists. It was first mooted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right president, who said last year that the burqa was "not welcome" on French soil. The first to call for a parliamentary motion was André Gerin, a Communist. This week's resolution won broad support, including from the Socialists.
In many ways, the French move is the most intriguing test. France is home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority, numbering 5m to 6m. It expects immigrants, or their offspring, of all faiths to adapt to French ways, not the other way round. France holds dear the ideal of laïcité, a strict ban on religion in the public arena that emerged from anticlerical struggles in the 19th century. It was in the name of laïcité that France banned the Muslim headscarf (and other "conspicuous" religious symbols) in state schools in 2004.
But France's leaders do not cite laïcité as a reason for the burqa ban; to do so, they note, would mean accepting that hiding female faces is mandated by Islam. Most influential Muslims in France, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an official body, and Fadela Amara, a female Muslim minister, reject that reading. Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the CFCM, says "no Koranic text prescribes the wearing of the burqa or niqab."
So the upcoming law—stating that "nobody may wear clothing that masks the face in any public place"—has been justified on two other grounds. One is security, and the need to be identifiable. (There was consternation earlier this year when two men clad in burqas robbed a post office near Paris.) The other is human dignity and equality between the sexes. "This is not a religious question," argues Jean-François Copé, parliamentary leader of the ruling UMP party. Most French people view the burqa as a clear token of oppression; if libertarians defend it, this is seen as implying softness on ills such as domestic violence.
Recent news has reinforced that view. This week, in a town west of Paris, police arrested a man suspected of forcing his wife to wear the burqa, and of raping and beating her. (With such cases in mind, the upcoming French law would reserve the harshest penalties for a man found to have made his wife wear the burqa.) Mr Copé firmly rejects the idea that France is unjustifiably curbing liberty. He notes that: "On Fifth Avenue, you do not have the liberty to walk down the street completely nude."
The motives of young French Muslim women—sometimes more inclined to hide their faces than their mothers were—are hotly contested. Many French analysts say a "re-veiling" trend among young girls reflects manipulation by zealots. Although no more than 2,000 women in France cover their face, the phenomenon is growing. Dounia Bouzar, a French Muslim anthropologist, told a parliamentary inquiry that many of the women were young. Intelligence sources say two-thirds are French nationals, and nearly a quarter converts. Many come from North Africa, where there is no face-covering tradition.
So France's leaders are determined to press ahead. Two risks stand out. First, the ban, which some see as a ruse by Mr Sarkozy to woo far-right voters, may stigmatise Islam and create a defensive reaction. (This is why Mr Moussaoui, who dislikes the burqa, opposes a ban.) As the debate took off, a mosque in south-east France was sprayed with gunfire.
Second, it is unclear how the ban would work in practice. The Conseil d'Etat, the highest administrative court, has questioned the legal basis for the ban. And what about foreigners? Mr Copé says that the ban would apply to visitors too: but would women from the Gulf states be hauled away from smart boutiques?