The Death Throes of Pakistan’s Hindus

I just returned from a month in India during which time an incredible number of significant events were occurring. My primary mission in going was to document and raise awareness of the ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus. I found plenty, including evidence of ongoing attacks on them both in Bangladesh and in West Bengal, India. The border between the two is so porous that terrorists and contraband move freely with and without the help of India’s Border Security Force or West Bengal police. But I also witnessed the tragic beginning of the end for Pakistan’s Hindus. Once one in five Pakistanis, they have been reduced to one percent of the population. Read more

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in ourselves.”

When historians look back on our era and wonder how a relatively small group of Islamist radicals controlled the international agenda for great countries across the globe, they will ask why we failed to heed those words that William Shakespeare wrote four centuries earlier. Last week in Kolkata, India, police arrested the editor and publisher of the city’s most prestigious English-language daily for “hurting the religious feelings” of Muslims.

That’s right, we now live in an age where the state can muzzle press freedom because the newspaper hurt someone’s feelings. Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha of The Statesman were hauled before a judge on February 11 and charged under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code which outlaws “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings.” The law is unclear, as one might imagine when it comes to specific and objective criteria for determining one’s intentions. It appears that Section 295A trusts this Solomon-like task to whichever bureaucrat happens to take a fancy to pursuing a case. Read more

Are my Sources better than CNN’s?

My news sources must be so much better than CNN’s and others’ because I keep coming across things that they do not have. The most recent item was the death of an Islamic clergyman this week in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Moulana Hafez Hamidullah passed away quietly at his residence at the age of 63. He was an influential member of the Bangladesh Khelafat Andolan (BKA), a religious and political association of fundamentalist Muslims, very prominent Islamic clergyman, and Vice Principal of a madrassa. Despite the media’s seeming obsession with Islam, there was no mention of Hamidullah’s passing anywhere.

Yet, this very religious Muslim cleric was consistently outspoken in condemning “all forms of militancy in the name of religion.” He preached interfaith harmony based on mutual respect and was (along with the BKA) outspoken defenders of Bangladesh’s “Muslim Zionist,” Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was arrested and tortured after exposing the rise of radical Islam in his country and urging relations with Israel, continues to publish Bangladesh’s only openly Zionist newspaper. The BKA also joins with Choudhury in urging an end to Bangladesh’s prohibition on travel to Israel and in promoting relations with the Jewish State. Read more

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