Security at Places of Worship: More Than a Matter of Faith

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In recent months, several high-profile incidents have raised awareness of the threat posed by individuals and small groups operating under the principles of leaderless resistance. These incidents have included lone wolf attacks against a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, an armed forces recruitment center in Arkansas and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Additionally, a grassroots jihadist cell was arrested for attempting to bomb Jewish targets in the Bronx and planning to shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

In addition to pointing out the threat posed by grassroots cells and lone wolf operatives, another common factor in all of these incidents is the threat of violence to houses of worship. The cell arrested in New York left what they thought to be active improvised explosive devices outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Community Center. Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Although Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad conducted his attacks against a Little Rock recruiting center, he had conducted preoperational surveillance and research on targets that included Jewish organizations and a Baptist church in places as far away as Atlanta and Philadelphia. And while James von Brunn attacked the Holocaust Museum, he had a list of other potential targets in his vehicle that included the National Cathedral. Read more

OBAMA’S policy on Kashmir can ratchet up anti-Americanism in India

If the Obama administration wants to know why anti-Americanism gets ratcheted up in different parts of the world, it need not look anywhere else, but look hard at the dangerous Af-Pak policy it is toying with at the expense of India and the inevitable fallouts that might result.

What kind of talks did Under Secretary Nicholas Burns have in mind when he allegedly carried the US message to India that dialogue with Pakistan should resume once again? Can India trust Pakistan to walk the talk after nothing serious has been done after the Mumbai attacks that was hatched and perpetrated from Pakistani soil?

And talk with whom in the wake of the release by Pakistani courts of Hafeez Mohammad Saeed, the leader of the banned terror outfit, the Lashkar e Taiba, now masquerading as an NGO by the name of Jama’at-ud-Da’wah? His organization has been responsible for numerous terror attacks in India involving loss of innocent lives including the latest carnage in Mumbai last year. Read more

Nepal: A Political Crisis and Indo-Chinese Tensions

Summary

Nepalese Prime Minister Prachanda resigned on May 4 in protest of the president’s decision to block the Maoist leadership from sacking Nepal’s army chief. While the political disarray in Nepal threatens to break the government apart, it also has stirred a long-standing rivalry between India and China over the Himalayan country.

Analysis

Nepal’s Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda resigned May 4 in protest of the Nepalese president’s decision to block the elected Maoist government from firing the country’s army chief. The Nepalese government is now in danger of collapsing as India scrambles to form a coherent policy toward Kathmandu to counter China’s growing influence in the Himalayan country. The Maoist leadership, meanwhile, will draw on Indo-Chinese competition over Kathmandu in an attempt secure its political demands. Read more

China is a threat to global good

As the world watches without being able to bring about a ceasefire, a humanitarian crisis is underway in Sri Lanka with nearly 170,000 civilians displaced and 50,000 trapped in the war zone. It has become common for rampaging armed forces and also those in cahoots with terrorists the world is battling with, despots and dictators to cock a snook at the UN. Much of the cockiness lies in the covert moral and logistic support lent by China, hungry for resources for widening its reach to get a major slice of business in the troubled regions and make its presence felt.

The Sri Lankan offensive against the LTTE is not faulted as the terrorist organization has used all possible means of violence over the years to foment terror in this beautiful island resembling a tear drop in the Indian Ocean. Lots of blood sweat and tears have flowed for the fight for a separate Tamil homeland in protest for the marginalization of the Sri Lankan Tamils. But the process of terror was always condemnable and has encouraged later day terror groups like the al Qaeda to emulate their suicide attack techniques. Read more

Why strong Indo-Israel relation is needed

One week ago South Asia Forum organized a seminar on the issue of “challenges before India and Israel and areas of co-operation”. This was first public exposure for this think tank which came in existence last year with a vision to make India super power with larger role in South Asia and global politics. This think tank is manifestation of an ambition of youthful and energetic voice which wants development and security but in last few years this world has become so insecure to live and without security one can not think of development.

Now time has come to discuss on these matters frankly to insure security for our generation and next generation. When people talk about prevailing situation of insecurity everywhere in the world they talk about vague issues but could we say with an authority that this situation of insecurity is merely a result of unemployment, frustration and acts of some misguided youths. No, we can not say this and if we are saying this it means either we are trying to be politically correct or we are unable to read the situation. South Asia forum is an effort to break the taboo of political correctness and shed out pseudo liberalism. When we talk about pseudo liberalism it identify those elements in society who are aware of problem, its symptom and some times also support the ways to fight it out but when it comes public platform they start echoing the words of political correctness to build their image as liberal. Read more

Challenges before India and Israel and areas of co-operation

The greatest challenge facing any free society in a time of war—and make no mistake about it, that is exactly what time it is for the world—is to remain a free society while effectively fighting that war. As the great American statesman, Benjamin Franklin, once said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The worst thing we can do is to allow our enemies to dictate an agenda by which we sacrifice those qualities that we believe distinguish us from them.

So, how do we do that? I am neither Indian nor Israeli, although I have strong feelings for both nations; I am nothing more than an individual American citizen. As an American, however, what I have in common with the Indian and Israeli gentlemen on the dais with me is that I am a citizen of a free society that has been marked for extinction by the same global adversary: radical Islam. Let me repeat, our free societies have been marked for extinction by the same global adversary: radical Islam. Not terrorism, which is only a tactic; or unspecified radicals, militants, or whatever politically correct word is in fashion at the moment but radical Islamists. For the words we use are important. They can help us act, or they can hinder action. If we merely are engaged in a war on “terror,” then all we are doing is reacting to a tactic after it occurs. It means we are not engaged in a comprehensive effort to defeat the terrorists and those who send them. If our enemies are merely “the extremists,” it means we have decided to abandon the search for any ideology or force that unites those extremists and motivates them. That is why we hear simplistic analyses that say land disputes or poverty are the cause of these horrible acts. Read more

Indians love Obama, but call him naive on Pakistan

NEW DELHI: On my first day of a visit to India, the media here was pre-occupied with an event they kept describing in horror as “shocking” and “audacious.” It was a terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan on the Sri Lankan cricket team that left eight players with minor injuries.

The story dominated every one of the broadcast media and for hours seemed to be the only story they were covering. All day long, at times with a dizzying speed, anchors would interrupt their anxiety-laced presentations to cut to an expert explaining what the “cowardly act of terrorism” meant, to a Pakistani official vowing “we will get the bastards,” to comments from Indian sports celebrities saying how smart their team was not to go to Lahore.

CNN’s sports reporter called the event “an atrocity,” a term his station has never used to describe any of the horrific and fatal attacks against Israel. Nor did his station hesitate for a moment to label the attackers “terrorists,” never once militants. To an outsider, the level of horror seemed out of proportion to the attack and casualties, especially in a region that sees far worse on a numbingly regular basis.

The reality, however, is that it was not.For the former British colonies and especially the nations of South Asia, cricket is treated almost reverentially; as a sanctuary from always tense India-Pakistan relations and the region’s growing political violence. Read more

India and Israel; India is Israel

In a few days, I will leave the United States for a month in India. While the immediate purpose of my visit is to stop the ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus—which already has reduced the Hindu population there from one in five to less than one in ten—it is impossible to see that outside of the larger context of our war with radical Islam. The fact that the victims are Hindu is no coincidence. In fact, they are victims because they are Hindu, and their eradication is part of the larger jihad being waged by radical Islam.

India and Israel did not establish full diplomatic relations until 1992, largely due to a nexus of issues related to the ideology that led India’s Jawaharlal Nehru to become one of the architects of the non-aligned movement in 1955. Anti-US and anti-Israel, it is no coincidence that two of its founding fathers were Gamal Nasser of Egypt (the era’s leader against Israel) and Josip Broz Tito (an anti-US communist). But in 1991, the dynamics of geo-politics changed drastically with the fall of the Soviet Union and nations scrambled to re-arrange their alliances. 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

Pakistani president admits Taliban has “huge” presence in Pakistan

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Taliban has established itself across a large part of Pakistan, forcing the country to fight a war against the hard-line Islamist group that is about Pakistan’s own survival, President Asif Zardari told CBS News.

“(The Taliban) do have a presence in huge amounts of land in our side. Yes, that is the fact,” Zardari told “60 Minutes” in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday, excerpts of which were released on Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama said this week there was no doubt terrorists were operating in safe havens in the tribal regions of Pakistan, and the United States wanted to make sure Islamabad was a strong ally in fighting that threat.

Obama and Zardari spoke by telephone on Wednesday, the Pakistani foreign ministry said. The two discussed the surge in violence by al Qaeda and the Taliban, which has stepped up its insurgency against U.S. forces and the Afghan government.

Zardari said Pakistan had been in denial about the Taliban in the past. “Our forces weren’t increased … . We have weaknesses and they are taking advantage of that weakness,” he said.
Another sign of changing attitudes is the increasing popularity of books, movies and documentaries that explore sex discrimination, rights advocates say.

“Women do not have a proper status in society,” said Mahnaz Mohammadi, a filmmaker. “Films are supposed to be a mirror of reality, and we make films to change the status quo.”

In a recent movie, “All Women Are Angels,” a comedy that was at the top of the box office for weeks, a judge rejects the divorce plea of a woman who walked out on her husband when she found him with another woman.
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