H E A D L I N E S [ 2 ]
February 2017
Is America heading towards fascism?
By Habib Siddiqui: Recently I was shaken to learn that the son of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali was detained for hours by immigration officials at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida on Feb. 7 after returning from speaking at a Black History Month event in Montego Bay, Jamaica. They were pulled aside while going through customs because of their Arabic-sounding names, according to family friend and lawyer Chris Mancini.Immigration officials let Camacho-Ali go after she showed them a photo of herself with her ex-husband, but her son did not have such a photo and wasn't as lucky. Mancini said officials held and questioned Ali Jr. for nearly two hours, repeatedly asking him, "Where did you get your name from?" and "Are you Muslim?" When Ali Jr. responded that yes, he is a Muslim, the officers kept questioning him about his religion and where he was born. Ali Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1972 and holds a U.S. passport. Read More
Amnesty warns: Politics of demonization breeding division and fear around the globe
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: The Amnesty International says that politicians wielding a toxic, dehumanizing “us vs them” rhetoric are creating a more divided and dangerous world. The warning came in its 2017 annual assessment of human rights around the world released on Wednesday (Feb. 22). Read More
Global entry privileges for Muslim-American travelers are quietly revoked
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: The Seven-million strong American Muslim community, on the receiving end since the ghastly terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, has ostensibly become target of President Trump's policies.While the January 27 travel ban may still be affecting American Muslim citizens, some Muslim travelers outside the seven countries targeted by the controversial ban, including naturalized U.S. citizens and green card holders, are indicating that their Global Entry status has been revoked. Read More
This time Trump lies about Sweden
By Habib Siddiqui: Is Trump sounding like a pathological liar? Otherwise, why would he continue to lie about crimes that did not happen? As you know he has been campaigning in Florida this weekend. There he cited a nonexistent incident in Sweden while talking about the relationship between terror attacks and refugees around the world during a rally in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday. "You look at what's happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden ... Sweden ... who would believe this? Sweden, they took in large numbers, they are having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what's happening Brussels, you look at what's happening all over the world," Trump said. Read More
Is there a glimmer of hope in a dysfunctional world?
By Habib Siddiqui: The USA is in a disarray or so it seems these days with the POTUS attacking the media. On Thursday Trump said that the media "is out of control." Some media "is fantastic," the president allowed. But on the whole, journalism is plagued by "false, horrible, fake reporting." Read More
The number of anti-Muslim hate groups on the rise in US
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: The number of anti-Muslim hate groups nearly tripled from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016. That's just one of the dramatic statistics in a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This annual count from the SPLC includes groups like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white nationalists, along with anti-government patriot groups and anti-LGBT groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center's Senior Fellow, Mark Potok, says their numbers have consistently been on the rise since about 2000. The radical right out there is booming. The number of hate groups rose from 892 groups in 2015 to 917 last year. Read More
Trump Administration lies again
By Habib Siddiqui: It seems that U.S. President Donald Trump has been misspeaking -to put it mildly -more often than not - since at least the presidential election times. Many political analysts assumed that once electedhe would modify his positions and behave more responsibly as a president. But old habits die hard, esp. for someone like a 70-year old Trump who continues to prove all those pundits wrong. After winning the presidential race, Trump has surrounded himself with many hateful provocateurs in the White House - for example, guys like Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Stephen Miller and Michael Flynn -who see themselves as modern-day crusaders to settle their old scores with the world of Islam. “We must acknowledge that we are at war,” Flynn told Bannon during a discussion of terrorism in July 2016 in his Breitbart News Daily radio show. “Our enemies have declared war on us and we have to take this on with all the resources that the United States of America can bring to bear," Flynn said. "There is no doubt.” Read More
Kashmir: A road to peace or disaster?
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai: All parties need to understand that ultimately the Kashmir issue will only be resolved across the table through tripartite negotiations between India, Pakistan and Kashmiri leadership. And if that is true, then why wait? Any delay will cause more death and destruction in the region. Any dialogue process demands compromises for the sake of greater good. All parties including India, Pakistan and Kashmir need to show some flexibility in order to reach a final settlement. The contours of compromises should be discussed at the table and not beyond it. Read More
US Court of Appeals rejects to reinstate Trump's Muslim travel ban
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: A three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday, February 9, 2017 unanimously upheld a lower court’s order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its immigration and refugee order. The panel decisively rejected the Justice Department’s arguments against the restraining order. “We hold that the Government has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, nor has it shown that failure to enter a stay would cause irreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergency motion for a stay,” the three judges wrote in their 29-page decision. Read More
Trump’s chaotic first couple of weeks
By Habib Siddiqui: On Saturday in its front cover page the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel posted an illustration of the U.S. President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.It depicts a cartoon figure of Trump with a bloodied knife in one hand and the statue's head, dripping with blood, in the other. It carries the caption: "America First". The cartoon says it all as to the direction Trump is trying to take America. The artist who designed the cover, Edel Rodriguez, a Cuban who came to the United States in 1980 as a political refugee, told The Washington Post: "It's a beheading of democracy, a beheading of a sacred symbol." Read More
The plight of 18.8 million war-torn Yemenis
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: The United Nations and humanitarian organizations Wednesday (February 8) launched an international appeal for $2.1 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to 18.8 million Yemenis. This is more than two thirds of the total population of 27.4 million of the war-devastated Yemen. At least 12 million people in Yemen need life-saving assistance in 2017, the UN sources said. “Two years of war have devastated Yemen… Without international support, they may face the threat of famine in the course of 2017 and I urge donors to sustain and increase their support to our collective response,” said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien in a press release on the launch of the Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen in Geneva. Read More
Appeals court declines to reinstate Trump travel ban
AMP Report: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals early Sunday morning (Feb. 5) denied the Justice Department's request for an immediate reinstatement of President Donald Trump's ban on all refugees and travelers from seven Muslim countries. The Court of Appeals has asked for both sides to file legal briefs before the court makes its final decision after a federal judge halted the program on Friday, January 27, 2017. What this means is that the ruling by US District Court Judge, in Seattle, James Robart, who suspended the ban, will remain in place -- for now. Read More
Muslim Ban Blocked: Federal judge issues nationwide injunction against Trump Order
In a stunning rebuke, a federal judge in Seattle Friday (February 3, 2017) ordered a national halt to enforcement of President Trump’s controversial travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim nations.U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled in favor of Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who sued on January 30 to invalidate key provisions of Trump’s executive order. Trump’s executive order, signed Jan. 27, indefinitely blocks entry to the United States for Syrian refugees and temporarily suspends entry to other refugees and citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Read More
The UN and Kashmir: Where Do We Go From Here?
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai: If we were to judge the UN based upon its history of involvement in efforts to resolve international conflicts, the simplest answer is that it has been an enormous failure. The UN of course is a far more complex organization whose work covers such a wide range of activities that conflict resolution is really only a small aspect of its work. Nevertheless, if we consider the fact that its fundamental mission in being created was to be a means of preventing global catastrophes like the Second World War, then conflict resolution would have to be considered Job One. Read More
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Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
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