RIFLE RANGE BOY

Mission Sabah: The Manhunt V.G. Kumar Das It used to be that Sabah was one of Malaysia's high income earning states. In the late 60s, Sabah was poised to go places. Then the vultures moved in ..... First, they reaped the land of its natural resources. Then they divided the lands and sealed their dominance through the ballot box. Readers well-versed with Malaysian history of the early 1980s would be familiar with project IC where citizenships were given away like M&M's to 'eligible' subjects. Thousands of Filipina boat people flocked to the shores of Sabah to be counted. The project was deemed a whopping success with the favourable state election results (to the national ruling party) that ensued. Nobody actually wondered why most congregations of Pakistanis in the country are centred in Sabah - as if there was a mass trans-subcontinental migration of Pakistan êmigrês is in the 80s. Blame it all on project IC! Not to forget the moral and economic support of Islamic f...

Kalifat (Miniseries S1 E1-8, Swedish, 2020) Netflix BR Ambedkar, the Indian polymath, an economist, a jurist, a philosopher, politician and social reformer, was once at a crossroad.  Having had first-hand experience pulling himself out of poverty and earning himself a myriad of international recognitions, the public's discriminatory behaviour was still palpable. The honour of leading the committee to draft the Indian Constitution meant nothing. Post-Independent India still oozed caste discrimination bigotry.  He ventured into the possibility of leading the whole oppressed and backward communities to embrace another religion. Babasaheb Ambedkar took a deep dive into various religions, including Islam and Christianity, and finally decided upon Buddhism. About Islam, he had this to say. The  Brotherhood of Islam is not the brotherhood of Man but an exclusive club to care for their own kind.  Even though the religion preaches egalitarianism, in reality, this is far from ...

Sufiyum Sujathayum (Sufi and Sujatha, Malayalam; 2020) It started with a slow but discernable sporadic increase in reported cases of Hindu girls eloping with Muslim boys. Then came in the honour killings. The media picked it up. Everyone else then came out with their experiences of so-and-so female members of their families ex-communicating from the rest in pursuit of true love. To these girls, it finally meant embracing a new religion, new name, erasing themselves of their past lives and age-old traditions. People started calling this phenomenon as 'love jihad' -  a supposed form of religious warfare by  Muslim boys to e ntice Hindu girls into conversion through marriage. It was a numbers game. They allege that that was another modality to increase their representation in the community. In 2009, it garnered national attention   with claims of widespread conversions in  Kerala  and  Karnataka . There were also similar accusations by British Sikhs an...

Partition Museum, Amritsar. Every day we hear of people justifying the violence that is accelerating around the world to injustices of those in power against the powerless. The perpetrators rally behind their leaders who hail their people as victims of an unjust system. They are ready with conspiratory theories to justify resistance to the cruel world.  Unfortunately, life is never easy. Demands snowballs when one party's need is fulfilled. Pretty soon, splinter factions will arise, and the requests never end. Even people who had been uprooted from the hostilities still insists on returning to their past glory days, which by all accounts, may be a figment of their imagination. Examples of these are aplenty around us. My recent meetings with close Sindhi friends whose past generation was the victim of such an atrocity showed me how they handled the whole catastrophe. I did not think much of what they were saying then, but my recent visit to the recently opened (August 20...

Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan Author: Caroline Fourest (2007) For Mature Readers Only. For the longest time, Tariq Ramadan has been hailed as a moderate Muslim. He has been looked upon as the person who would be the go-between to help to salvage the good name of the religion. His paternal grandfather established the notorious Islamic Brotherhood, but that did not prevent him from having his voice heard in the international arena. He asserts that he cannot be blamed for the sins of his grandfather and the baggage that he carries with the family name. Nevertheless, he is proud of his heritage. Tariq, probably named after the first Muslim conqueror in Europe when he invaded Spain, also shares his name with the pillar of Europe, the Rock of Gibraltar, called Rock of Tariq in the Islamic world. His wife is Isabelle, an ex-Catholic, now plays the picture-perfect image of an ideal Muslim wife. His brother, Hani, a non-practising physician, gave up his...

The Jew is not my Enemy (Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism) Tarek Fatah (2010) Warning: Only for Mature Readers It is often said it is good to forgive and forget. People also say that to err is human and to excuse is divine. We have seen nations fight in one generation, only to be allies in the next. But somehow, the Muslim-Jewish animosity seems to have last centuries. The earliest record of Jewish betrayal happened during the Battle of Badr (Trench War) when Meccan pagans ambushed Prophet Mohamed's army in Medina. A group of Jews who were chased from Medina for breaking certain treaties joined forces with the Meccans. As the going was tough, and the mighty Meccan army could not infiltrate the Medinians, the renegade Jews tried to coax the Medinaian Jews to double cross. Here, the story turns cloudy. After the win, Mohamed is supposed to have personally killed about 900 Jews to be buried in trenches. The authenticity of such an event has been argued f...

The Power of Nightmare (2004) The rise of politics of fear #03. The Shadows in the Cave With the appointment of Bill Clinton as the President and the fail of various uprisings to establish Muslim governments in the Islamic countries, it looked both the neoconservatives and the jihadists movements were doomed to fail. They appear to be marginalized, losing the flavour of the times. The turning point came with the 2001 destruction of the New York Twin Towers. After failing to receive people's support in Algeria and Egypt, in 1998, Zawahari and Osama retreated to the barren land of Afghanistan. They then changed the strategy. Instead of creating mayhem in Islamic countries, they creating ruckus in concerns of the enemies of the Muslims (in their eyes).Attacks were targeted at embassies, hotels and outlets frequented by their enemy's citizens (read Americans) in Kenya, Tanzania. Volunteers from various countries who came to Afghanistan to serve in the name of religion we...

The  Power of Nightmare  (2004) The rise of politics of fear #2. The Phantom Victory The neoconservatives and Islamic jihadists have one common goal- to elevate their community. In the mid 70s and 80s, USSR was also their common enemy. Their playground then was Afghanistan. When Afghanistan was attacked, Ronald Reagan and his band of neoconservatives took it upon themselves to arm the Mujahideens with latest technology and weapons as well as plaster them with tons of money to crush the Soviet power. Pretty soon, the Muslim clergymen around the Muslim passed a fatwa (decree) calling it a religious duty to help their Muslim brothers to protect their motherland. This just drew support in many forms. Through Abdullah Azam's enterprising efforts, help came from Arabs, members of Muslim Brotherhood and other more radical Islamic groups. Some prisons were more than willing to relieve their radical inmates for this jihad. These people wanted to use Afghanistan as a model to ma...